Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long record of questioning the safety of childhood vaccinations persisted as a flash point for him Thursday during a confirmation hearing where a key Republican quickly raised concerns about his views.
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, opened the hearing with tough questions for Kennedy. He asked him to reject a long-discredited theory that vaccines cause autism.
Kennedy refused to flatly do so.
“It’s no secret I have some reservations on your past positions on vaccines and other issues,” Cassidy told the nominee.
Cassidy is considered to be a crucial vote for Kennedy to be confirmed as the Trump administration’s top health official. He shared with Kennedy a personal story about an 18-year-old woman whose liver was failing from a hepatitis infection.
“It was the worst day of my medical career because I thought $50 of vaccines could have prevented this all.”
Cassidy noted that Kennedy’s broad popularity and name recognition had given him a powerful platform for his views on vaccines and said Kennedy’s advocacy had led people to forgo the COVID-19 vaccine.
He then bore into Kennedy’s views on common vaccines, Lyme disease and approvals for future vaccines.
“If you are approved to this position, will you say unequivocally, will you reassure mothers unequivocally and without qualification that the measles and hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism?” Cassidy asked.
Kennedy avoided answering directly, but said “if the data is there, I will absolutely do that.”
Then, in a rare show of across-the-aisle cooperation, Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats, followed up on Cassidy’s line of questioning.
Again, Kennedy refused to give a definitive answer.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends infants receive doses of the hepatitis vaccination.
In his opening remarks, Kennedy once again rejected the “anti-vaccine” label and instead said he is “pro-safety.” He repeated many of the same lines he offered to the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.
Sanders, the senior minority party member on the committee, pressed Kennedy to concede that healthcare was a human right, as his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncles, John F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy, had done. Kennedy again did not give a definitive answer.
Kennedy wants to lead the $1.7-trillion agency that oversees healthcare coverage — Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act marketplace — for roughly half the country, approves then recommends vaccines for deadly diseases and conducts safety inspections of food and hospitals.
Seitz and Groves write for the Associated Press.