The parents of the unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died from the measles are speaking out. Credit: Blackjake / Getty

The parents, part of a Mennonite community in west Texas, lost their six-year-old daughter Kaylee following a three-week struggle with measles in late February, The Mirror reported.

Despite the devastating outcome, the couple defended their decision not to vaccinate their child in a filmed interview released on March 17 by Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group.

They stood by their beliefs and downplayed the severity of the illness that took their child’s life, describing measles as “not that bad” and saying that Kaylee’s death was simply “her time”. Her mother also added: “She was too good for this earth.”

The couple said they would “absolutely not take the MMR vaccine,” which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella.

Instead, they credited alternative treatments, such as castor oil and inhaled steroids, for helping their four other children recover quickly. “The measles wasn’t that bad. They got over it pretty quickly,” the mother said.

Kaylee’s condition, however, worsened. After several days of illness and fatigue, her breathing became labored, prompting her parents to take her to Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock.

She was intubated and died a few days later, reportedly from pneumonia, a known complication of measles.

According to the Associated Press, her death marks the first measles-related fatality in the United States in ten years.

Following the girl’s tragic passing, her siblings also contracted measles.

Credit: DIGICOMPHOTO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty

In the interview, the late girl’s father claimed measles “are good for the body” and even suggested they offer protection against cancer, a belief that doctors flatly reject.

“None of that is true,” Dr. Jay K. Varma, a pediatric infectious disease specialist, told PEOPLE. “Measles are not good for people in any way. They put children in grave danger as they did for that family’s daughter. They put children at risk of other infections for a couple of years after measles. And there is no evidence that measles has any effect on risk for cancer or risk for anything else later on.”

Dr. Varma pointed out that the virus can trigger long-term complications such as subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a degenerative and usually fatal neurological condition that may surface years after infection.

He also explained that you can get pneumonia from measles “or kids with measles can develop a superinfection, meaning bacterial pneumonia on top of measles,” adding: “It’s because they have the original viral infection. That sets them up to have a bacterial infection on top of it.”

“This is a very typical story. Kids with measles can seem like they’re getting better and then can develop pneumonia later. Pneumonia can be from measles alone or measles plus a bacterial infection. But in either case, this whole course is preventable by vaccination,” he said.

In addition to this, the doctor spoke about how the family questioned why their daughter hadn’t received breathing treatments like her siblings, who were given inhaled steroids and seemed to recover more easily.

“There’s no evidence for either inhaled steroids, which is what budesonide is or inhaled beta agonists like albuterol in measles,” Dr. Varma said. “There’s simply no evidence that they do anything.” He added that the other children “were simply not as sick.”

The little girl was intubated and died a few days later, reportedly from pneumonia, a known complication of measles. Credit: BSIP / Getty

As for home remedies like vitamin A or cod liver oil, he noted that there’s a small place for medically supervised vitamin A use but warned against assuming that it will cure everything.

“Children who are malnourished are at higher risk of severe courses and death from measles, and we know from studies from decades ago that vitamin A supplementation for people who have measles can decrease – but not eliminate – the risk of death and severe disease,” he said.

However, he cautioned about the dangers of overdosing: “It accumulates in the body. It can cause liver damage. It can cause central nervous system damage. It can cause issues with skin – it is not a benign treatment.”

He also dismissed cod liver oil as helpful, saying there is “no evidence that that helps in any way and giving a supplement that has an unknown amount of things in it is unlikely to be helpful.”

The mother of the deceased girl said she believes she was vaccinated herself but still showed symptoms of measles. Dr. Varma explained this is possible.

“Especially for someone who got a single dose of vaccine, there is some chance that, if they are exposed to measles, they can develop measles,” he said. “Often those people have milder disease than people who haven’t been vaccinated, and it sounds like her course was pretty mild.”

His overarching message was simple: vaccines work, and lives are on the line. “The vaccine is safe and it is highly effective, and we have been using it for 60 years at this point,” he said. “There is a lot of misinformation out there and what happens when you have that level of misinformation, is that vaccine rates drop, you end up with large outbreaks like you have in West Texas now.

“We’ve lost a child already in this outbreak and an adult has died in New Mexico. Both of those deaths were preventable,” Dr. Varma added. “Measles is not supposed to be causing deaths in people in the U.S. in 2025, and so this is all preventable.”