RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearings were even worse than expected
L /
A
Two days of
contentious Senate confirmation hearings did nothing to assuage doubts about the suitability of prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. If anything, his responses were even worse than expected and illustrate that he is a uniquely dangerous choice for the position.
The bar for Kennedy was set very low. No one expected him to contradict President
Donald Trump on harmful policy issues such as restricting
abortion care, slashing Medicaid and unraveling the Affordable Care Act. No one thought he was an expert on health policy, though his insistence that he had a good grasp of the agencies he would oversee were undercut by his
inability to answer basic questions about how Medicare and Medicaid work.
His biggest hurdle was proving that he was not an anti-vaccine evangelist despite
decades of activism litigating against vaccine manufacturers and questioning the safety of childhood immunizations. I expected him to disavow past statements and claim that he would approach his work at HHS differently — from an advocate lobbying to change the system to a regulator overseeing it. This would have required a leap of faith but at least would have provided some reassurance.
But Kennedy went in the opposite direction. When questioned about his role in the 2019 Samoa measles epidemic that
killed 83 people, he
insinuated that some of these individuals did not die from measles and that measles (a virus that kills
nearly 3 in 1,000 infected children) is not dangerous. When asked whether he would recant his past assertion that Black people should have a different vaccination schedule from White people, he
doubled down, referring to “data” that Black people need a lower dose of a vaccine component.
Kennedy
stood by the egregious claim that the human papillomavirus vaccine that is
remarkably effective at preventing cervical cancer is, in fact, “killing girls.” He
would not say that the
coronavirus vaccine saved
millions of lives and asserted that the coronavirus did not pose a threat to kids. (In fact,
nearly 1,700 kids ages 17 and younger died from covid-19.) And though he touted his children being vaccinated as evidence that he supports immunizations, he could not respond when Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)
quoted him as saying, in 2020, that he “would do anything, pay anything, to go back in time and not vaccinate my kids.”
Perhaps the most damning exchange was with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), a physician who serves on both committees holding hearings to determine Kennedy’s fate. Cassidy
gave him a lifeline: He
talked about his concerns over dropping immunization rates because of misinformation, the influence Kennedy would have as HHS secretary, and why it was so important to have Kennedy once and for all clearly state that vaccines do not cause autism.
That was all Kennedy had to say. He didn’t. Instead, he went back to his playbook of asking for more research. He would review the evidence, he said, and apologize if proved wrong. Cassidy and numerous other senators cited the
more than one dozen studies from seven countries that have thoroughly debunked the autism connection. Kennedy refused to budge and pulled out his own “research” as evidence to the contrary.
These are not the actions of someone who has left his advocacy hat behind. These are not even the actions of someone who has a healthy skepticism of the establishment. Cherry-picking data to support a predetermined conclusion is the antithesis of science and should be
disqualifying for the person overseeing the nation’s top health and science agencies.
Kennedy’s supporters have sought to play down his troubling stances on vaccines by touting his “unique” ability to prevent chronic diseases and “Make America Healthy Again.” But what, exactly, does Kennedy plan to do about obesity, diabetes and heart disease? Despite being asked numerous times by sympathetic senators, he had surprisingly
little to say and reverted to talking points railing against pesticides and chemicals. I didn’t hear specific policy proposals, such as
restricting SNAP dollars from being used to buy junk food and stopping schools from serving
ultra-processed products.
There are surely many health experts trusted by Trump who could better fly the MAHA banner but who don’t come with the baggage of peddling anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. (Trump’s choice to head the Food and Drug Administration, surgeon
Marty Makary, comes to mind.)
As senators deliberate, they should remember the core medical principle of “first do no harm.” Whatever gains that could be made from chronic disease prevention would all be undone if previously eliminated infectious diseases such as measles and polio came roaring back, and if the United States faces another pandemic, as we very well could with the
H5N1 avian flu.
The question in front of them is whether Kennedy should be trusted with the health and safety of the American people. The answer cannot be clearer.
