Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Bill Cassidy opened Thursday’s hearing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. outlining his concerns over Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism.
The stark comments from Cassidy, a Republican who practiced medicine for 30 years, could create problems for Kennedy’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, as Republicans can only lose three GOP senators on the vote. Cassidy’s opening comments set the tone for the hearing and are the senator’s most direct comments against Kennedy to date.
Later in his remarks, Cassidy added: “Your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me. Can I trust that that is now in the past? Can data and information change your opinion or will you only look for data supporting a predetermined conclusion?”
Detailing his medical career working in public hospitals, Cassidy said an “inflection point” in his career was when he loaded an 18-year-old young woman onto an air ambulance to get a liver transplant from acute liver failure due to Hepatitis B.
“As she took off, it was the worst day of my medical career, because I thought a $50 dollar vaccine could have prevented this all,” Cassidy said. “And that was an inflection point in my career.”
Cassidy said Kennedy has to consider his influential following when raising concerns about vaccines.
Cassidy acknowledged that Kennedy is now trying to downplay his anti-vaccine rhetoric despite an extensive, recorded history of his linking vaccines to autism in children, but said that change doesn’t go far enough.
“I think you’ll tell us today, as you did in Finance Committee yesterday, that you’re pro-vaccine. So, what will you tell the American mother? Will you tell her to vaccinate her child or to not? Or to have a conversation with her doctor? But for many, that will be permission to not vaccinate their child.”
During his line of questioning, Cassidy asked Kennedy if he will reassure mothers unequivocally that the measles and hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism.
“If the data is there,” Kennedy responded.
That answer did not satisfy Cassidy: “I know the data is there.”