When long-shot presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that Nicole Shanahan would be his running mate, spectators were confused. Why would Shanahan, a wealthy Silicon Valley luminary and tech entrepreneur who has donated heavily to scientific causes and Democratic politicians, throw her lot in with the nation’s foremost anti-vaccine activist, a man who’s claimed that 5G causes “DNA dysfunction”?
But in a revealing video that aired with her campaign announcement this spring, Shanahan talked about her young daughter’s autism diagnosis, and proclaimed that chronic diseases in children are caused by “environmental disruptors that cause inflammatory symptoms which then reduce the child’s ability to heal.” Shanahan’s subsequent podcast appearances quickly made the matter far more clear: She, like Kennedy, has deeply held suspicions about vaccines.
Around that time, she told famed music producer Rick Rubin on his podcast that a lightbulb moment for her came in 2020, after her then 18-month-old daughter Echo was diagnosed with autism. Shanahan told Rubin she had read “every publication, every related publication, every indication, every clinical trial I could get my hands on.” In her telling, this project of deep research led her to a discovery so powerful, so taboo, that she hesitated to talk about it.
“So, medications impact our cellular biology in significant ways, and some medications more than others,” she said. “And in that category are vaccines. And it’s hard to say that today, right? And I hesitated for a while to even mention it with friends because vaccines are such an inflammatory topic right now.”
In recent months, in addition to promoting long-debunked ideas about the link between childhood vaccines and autism, Shanahan has also claimed the Moderna mRNA vaccine is unsafe and called for it to be “recalled immediately.” She has a lot of money to bring these views to public attention: While Shanahan’s philanthropic efforts were initially carried out though the family foundation of her then husband, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, she has subsequently funneled her efforts into her own foundation, backed by the billion-dollar fortune reportedly made, in large part, through her divorce.
Shanahan has donated at least $10 million directly to the Kennedy campaign, as well as $4.5 million to two super PACs supporting Kennedy’s run. At the same time, she’s also putting money behind at least one clinical trial that an autism science expert told WIRED they believe is alarmingly vague and poorly designed.
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