Washington D.C. – Protect Our Care blasted Senators Bill Cassidy’s and Susan Collins’ votes to advance Donald Trump’s problematic Surgeon General nominee Nicole Saphier out of the Senate HELP Committee today.
During Dr. Nicole Saphier’s nomination hearing for Surgeon General, Chairman Cassidy bemoaned the worst measles outbreak in 35 years as a “terrible legacy for this administration,”while taking no responsibility for casting the deciding vote for a leading contributor to the crisis: anti-vax Trump Health Secretary RFK Jr.
Yet once again, Cassidy buried his better judgement as a physician and voted today to advance Dr. Saphier’s nomination despite her troubling record as a vaccine skeptic, big tobacco investor and snake oil saleswoman. So did Senator Susan Collins, who also feigned ‘concern’ about RFK Jr’s extreme vaccine views during his nomination hearing, and disappointment when he turned them into harmful policy.
Neither Collins nor Cassidy cared enough that during her testimony, Dr. Saphier declined to say the Hepatitis B shot should be recommended for newborns, passed on categorically condemning addictive and harmful flavored vapes that appeal to young Americans, and refused to renounce Trump and RFK Jr’s unfounded and dangerous attempted downgrade of the CDC child vaccine schedule.
“The spineless decision by Bill Cassidy and Susan Collins to rubber stamp RFK Jr. as health secretary set back vaccination rates by decades and allowed measles to run amok,” said Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care. “They pretended to be shocked about the public health consequences of installing a science-denying fraud at HHS. But neither Senators Collins nor Cassidy have learned a thing, instead clearing the path for yet another vaccine skeptic to join the administration as a mouthpiece for the deadly Trump-RFK Jr anti-science agenda. Their ‘all talk, no action’ routine is a punch line at this point. When things go south as a result of Collins and Cassidy’s political cowardice, their crocodile tears are no consolation to the kids who suffer or die from a preventable disease.”
###