Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services ,departs after testifying in a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Thursday in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images).
WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s opinions about vaccine safety, both past and present, appeared likely to lead at least a few Senate Republicans to vote against his nomination following a second confirmation hearing Thursday.
Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said at the end of the three-hour hearing that he agrees with Kennedy that vaccines should be safe and effective, but that the two are far apart in how they went about their research.
“As someone who has discussed immunizations with thousands of people, I understand that mothers want reassurance that the vaccine their child is receiving is necessary, safe and effective. We agree on that point, the two of us,” Cassidy said. “But we’ve approached it differently. And I think I can say that I’ve approached it using the preponderance of evidence to reassure and you’ve approached using selected evidence to cast doubt.”
Throughout the hearing, Cassidy and numerous other senators from both political parties asked Kennedy about previous statements he’s made, including a repeatedly debunked claim that certain vaccines lead to autism.
Kennedy, who has been nominated by President Donald Trump to the hugely influential post of secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that he would apologize and reassure Americans about the measles and Hepatitis B vaccines, if Cassidy could show him data establishing their safety.
Cassidy discussed the decades of safety data during the hearing and cited peer-reviewed studies, but Kennedy never backed away from his claims.
Kennedy repeated statements he made during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing on Wednesday, during his Thursday hearing, including that he just wanted to follow the science, though he added caveats.
“I am not going to go into HHS and impose my pre-ordained opinions on anybody at HHS,” Kennedy said. “I’m going to empower the scientists at HHS to do their job and make sure that we have good science that’s evidence based, that’s replicable, where the raw data is published.”
The Autism Science Foundation writes on its website that Autism Spectrum Disorder is “a brain-based disorder that is characterized by social-communication challenges and restricted and repetitive behaviors, activities and interests.” The nonprofit, which funds research into the causes of autism, notes that “there are many genetic and environmental factors involved with autism.”
“These include both rare and common variants. About 15% of cases of autism can be linked to a specific gene mutation,” the organization says. “Some of the environmental factors that have been studied include medical conditions in parents, age, toxic chemicals, medications taken during pregnancy and before pregnancy, and diet and nutrition.”
Sanders: ‘Take on the insurance companies’
Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, ranking member on the HELP Committee, said there were areas where he hoped Kennedy succeeded, including reducing obesity and reducing ultra processed foods. But he said that actually improving Americans’ overall health would require much more than that.
“I’m not quite sure how we can move to making America healthy again, unless we have the guts to take on the insurance companies and the drug companies that guarantee healthcare to all people,” Sanders said.
Other policy changes, like paid family and medical leave, are essential to ensuring that people can live healthy lives, he said.
“There are women today who are having babies, then they’re going to go back to work in a week or two because they have no guaranteed paid family and medical leave,” Sanders said. “How do you have a healthy country when women are forced to go back to work? When women and men get fired because they stay home taking care of their sick kids? That’s not making America healthy again.”
Sanders said it’s extremely difficult for people to find time to live healthy lives when they must work extremely long hours, making $13 or $14 an hour, only to still live in poverty.
Murkowski focuses on Native Americans’ health
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, another centrist Republican who hasn’t publicly announced whether she’ll support Kennedy’s confirmation, questioned him about how he’d help improve health outcomes in Native American communities.
“When you look at our health statistics, whether it’s Alaska Natives or whether it is American Indians, our health statistics in this country … are not where they need to be,” Murkowski said. “And it’s in all categories. It’s infectious disease, it’s tuberculosis, it’s Hep C, it’s mental health, it’s depression, it’s substance use, it’s sexually transmitted diseases, it’s hypertension, stroke. It is so deep, and it is so challenging and it is so hard.”
Murkowski cited Kennedy’s prior comments where he said he’d triple the amount of federal spending to tribal communities.
Kennedy didn’t commit during the hearing to boosting funding for the Indian Health Service or other programs designed to support Indigenous communities, but said he did hope to hire someone from one of those communities at the assistant secretary level at HHS.
“I’d like to get him actually designated as an assistant secretary … to ensure that all of the decisions that we make in our agency are conscious of their impacts on the First Nations,” Kennedy said.
Murkowski also expressed concern about Kennedy’s statements on vaccine safety, saying that while some things need to be shaken up, there also has to be a “level of confidence” in public health programs.
“We have made some considerable gains in my state of Alaska with vaccinating the many people in very rural areas where one disease outbreak can wipe out an entire village,” Murkowski said. “We saw this in 1918 with the Spanish flu. And that’s why everyone was rattled to the core; villages were shut down entirely, entirely, during COVID because of the fear of transmission.”
Murkowski told Kennedy he was clearly an influencer with a platform he could use to greatly benefit people, if he chooses to.
“I’m asking you to focus on how you can use your position to provide for greater levels of confidence to the public when it comes to these life-saving areas,” Murkowski said.
Collins probes on vaccines
Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a centrist who faces a challenging reelection bid next year, told Kennedy she agreed with him that the federal government needs to focus more time, energy and money addressing chronic diseases, like diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
“But it concerns me when I read a quote from you that says, ‘I’m going to say to NIH scientists, God bless you all. Thank you for your public service. We’re going to give infectious diseases a break for about eight years,’” Collins said. “Don’t we need to do both?”
Kennedy said he “absolutely” agreed that researchers should focus their attention on finding solutions to both forms of illness and disease, but argued enough money hasn’t gone to studying both.
Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, sought to remind Kennedy that the Constitution gives Congress the ability to spend federal money and direct where that money goes.
Collins mentioned a pediatric nurse in Maine who shared worries about the impact a decrease in childhood vaccinations could have on other children in their communities, especially those who cannot get vaccines because of illnesses or allergies.
“She raised the concern that if people are discouraged from getting their children vaccinated, we will lose the herd immunity in a classroom,” Collins said. “And that means that a child who may be immunosuppressed and cannot get a vaccine are at risk of being in a classroom with an unvaccinated child. And thus at risk of getting the infectious disease because we’ve lost the herd immunity.”
Kennedy said he believed that people have stopped trusting in the safety of vaccines, but pledged to bring in “good science” if confirmed by the Senate.
“I’m going to restore trust and that will restore vaccine uptake,” Kennedy said.
Hassan challenges Kennedy on autism
New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan had one of the most pointed exchanges with Kennedy during the hearing, challenging the statements from some GOP senators who criticized Democrats for asking Kennedy certain questions regarding his past statements on vaccines.
“Now, some of you are new to this committee and new to the Senate, so you may not know that I am the proud mother of a 36-year-old young man with severe cerebral palsy,” Hassan said. “And a day does not go by when I don’t think about, ‘What did I do when I was pregnant with him that might have caused the hydrocephalus that has so impacted his life?’
“So please do not suggest that anybody in this body of either political party doesn’t want to know what the cause of autism is,” she said, adding that many of her friends have children with autism.
“Mr. Kennedy, that first autism study rocked my world. And like every mother, I worried about whether, in fact, the vaccine had done something to my son,” Hassan said. “And you know what? It was a tiny study of about 12 kids. And over time, the scientific community studied and studied and studied and found that it was wrong. And the journal retracted the study because sometimes science is wrong. We make progress. We build on the work and we become more successful. And when you continue to sow doubt about settled science, it makes it impossible for us to move forward. So that’s what the problem is here.”