Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. challenged the record of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the COVID-19 pandemic and highlighted the precipitous rise in chronic disease in the U.S. as he defended his shakeup of the health agency at a Senate hearing Thursday.
“These changes were absolutely necessary to restore the CDC’s role as the world’s gold standard public health with a central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease,” Kennedy said. “CDC failed that responsibility miserably during COVID when its disastrous and nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools and caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science and heightened economic inequality.”
The combative hearing follows Kennedy’s high-profile showdown with former CDC Director Susan Monarez last week. Kennedy ousted Monarez from the post on Aug. 25, less than a month into her tenure, over a dispute about his overhaul of the committee that advises the CDC on vaccine schedules.
In a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Democrats and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana criticized Kennedy for his actions to remake the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), as well as changes by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to COVID-19 vaccine approvals. They lambasted Kennedy as undermining confidence in vaccines and in established science.
“I’m approaching this as a doctor, not as a senator. I am concerned about children’s health, seniors’ health, all of our health. And I applaud you for joining the president in a call for radical transparency,” said Cassidy, referring to President Donald Trump’s call on Truth Social for COVID vaccine manufacturers to make data more readily available.
Cassidy last week appeared to side with Monarez in her dustup with Kennedy, urging physicians to ignore the ACIP’s recommendations.
Monarez alleged in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published hours before the hearing that Kennedy had pressured her to preapprove the outcome of an ACIP meeting scheduled for Sept. 18-19. Kennedy said that the op-ed amounted to a lie. He denied having a private meeting with her in which he asked her to leave.
Kennedy dismissed criticism of the changes to the ACIP from the American Academy of Pediatrics, pointing to the association’s pharmaceutical ties. Kennedy also cited a 2000 congressional investigation into physicians and scientists serving on the committee with financial stakes in the drugmakers they oversaw.
“I didn’t politicize ACIP, I depoliticized it,” Kennedy said. --->READ MORE HERE
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was skewered by members of both parties Thursday over his ouster of US public health officials — including the nation’s top immunization panel — during a fiery, three-hour Senate hearing.
Most of the clashes with members of the Senate Finance Committee centered on the 71-year-old Kennedy’s recent dismissal of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez — and the subsequent resignations of four other senior officials — as well as changes to US vaccination policy.
However, RFK Jr. also drew the ire of lawmakers by:
- Claiming the American Academy of Pediatrics was “greatly conflicted”
- Arguing the American Heart Association “has been corrupted by the pharma industry”
- Defending statements by a member of the new CDC vaccine advisory panel that mRNA jabs can “cause serious harm” and even kill otherwise healthy young people.
In one headline-grabbing exchange, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) dramatically accused Kennedy of refusing COVID-19 vaccines to Americans who need them.
Cassidy, a licensed gastroenterologist who cast a decisive vote to advance the HHS secretary’s nomination earlier this year, read out emails from Georgia-based conservative radio host Erick Erickson and another friend who said they or their loved ones had been left in the lurch by restricted immunization guidance. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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