RFK Jr. spent years stoking fear and mistrust of vaccines. Here's who gets hurt by Kennedy's work

Deep in their grief a few months later, Gina and Padrig Fahey received news that shocked them to their core: A favorite photo of their beloved son was plastered on the cover of a book that falsely argues COVID-19 vaccines caused a spike of sudden deaths among healthy young people.

The book, called “Cause Unknown,” was co-published by an anti-vaccine group led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, who is now running for president. Kennedy wrote the foreword and promoted the book, tweeting that it details data showing “ COVID shots are a crime against humanity.”

The Faheys couldn’t understand how Braden’s face appeared on the book’s cover, or why his name appeared inside it.

Braden never received the vaccine. His death in August 2022 was due to a malformed blood vessel in his brain. No one ever contacted them to ask about their son’s death, or for permission to use the photo. No one asked to confirm the date of his death — which the book misdated by a year. When the Faheys and residents of their town in California tried to contact the publisher and author to get Braden and his picture taken out of the book, no one responded.

“We reached out in every way possible,” Gina Fahey told The Associated Press in an emotional interview. “We waited months and months to hear back, and nothing.”