Republican Representative Admits Trump Deportations Are Causing Chaos
Despite issuing guidance that measles can be treated with simple vitamins, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted Tuesday that he’s never actually had to help someone recover from the disease before.
Kennedy was excoriated by Washington Representative Kim Schrier before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health Tuesday. She torched Kennedy for continuing to spread vaccine misinformation and refusing to listen to medical experts while he leads the nation’s public health policy.
“Have you ever treated measles?” asked Schrier, a former physician.
“No,” Kennedy said with a short laugh.
“Well I have,” Schrier said. “Let me tell you how miserable it is: These kids have high fevers, struggling to breathe, and they are crying. They suffer. The great thing is that there’s a vaccine to prevent it.”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials have described the current measles outbreak in Texas as the worst uptick the agency has seen in measles cases in the last 25 years. But the lackadaisical public response to the contagion has only been made worse by Kennedy’s politics, which include unfounded claims that the disease-eradicating vaccine was contributing to higher autism rates in kids.
Schrier also accused Kennedy of lying to Republican Senator Bill Cassidy during his February confirmation hearings when he promised not to alter the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Cassidy was a critical vote for Kennedy clinching the Cabinet role.
“But then two weeks ago you fired all 17 experts on that very committee. Mr. Secretary, question for you, did you lie to Senator Cassidy when you told him you would not change this panel of experts?” Schrier asked.
Kennedy denied having made that commitment altogether, calling it “inaccurate.”
“I made an agreement with him, and he and I talked many times about that agreement,” he said of Cassidy.
Kennedy claimed that all 17 members had potential conflicts of interest before instating eight new members who were reputed vaccine and Covid-19 skeptics.
In May, Kennedy justified a religious Texas community’s decision not to receive the vaccine by claiming that the measles vaccine contains “aborted fetus debris” as well as “DNA particles.”
It should go without saying, but the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine does not contain pieces of aborted fetuses. The vaccine contains live or weakened measles, mumps, and rubella viruses and ingredients to stabilize the solution.
