*WATCH RECORDING OF TODAY’S EVENT HERE
Washington D.C. – As this week marks the one-year anniversary that the Republican-led U.S. Senate narrowly confirmed anti-vax profiteer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Trump HHS Secretary, Protect Our Care and 314 Action hosted a virtual press event today with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier, M.D. (D-WA-08), Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, and Dr. Georges Benjamin, M.D. to discuss Kennedy’s many reckless and dangerous actions so far against our public health. Today is also the deadline for the health secretary to respond to a letter from key lawmakers raising concerns over his ties to vaccine injury lawsuits and whether his family and associates will profit from planned changes to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
Earlier this week, Protect Our Care released a report, “Public Health Enemy #1”, detailing Kennedy’s worst public health policy failures, including ushering in the largest measles outbreak in decades by continuing to fear-monger against vaccine safety. Today’s event also comes on the heels of bombshell reporting from The Guardian that Kennedy misled Senators during his confirmation process about his true anti-vax agenda during his trip to Samoa in 2019 during a deadly measles outbreak.
KEY EXCERPTS FROM TODAY’S VIRTUAL EVENT:
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR): “The way I’m going to start is by quoting Robert Kennedy Jr., word for word. A year ago today, here is what he said. He will do nothing, quote “that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines”. That statement we say today was a complete and total lie. The overwhelming evidence cataloged by Protect Our Care, the investigators that we have on the Finance Committee and others said that was a false promise that Robert Kennedy made a year ago. His strategy was basically to say anything he possibly could come up with that would get him confirmed. These bogus answers about what happened in Samoa, they lent credibility to an anti-vaccine crusade that preceded a deadly measles outbreak. 83 people were killed, mostly kids, and 1000s were sickened. We’re getting continuously more and more information based on communications and documents from public officials about what really went on in Samoa. Robert Kennedy was there for one major reason, and that’s to push anti-vaccine views. He came to the Finance Committee. I was the chairman. He lied to my face when I asked him about it in the committee, if he’s willing to lie to me about something that is so easily proven. What else is he lying to Americans about? Since coming to office, again and again, he’s betrayed the public interest. He purged the public health system of anybody who disagrees with his anti-vaccine ideology. The consequences of all those purges and the people who have real or perceived differences of opinion is bad for science, bad for public health, and really bad for America. All of this comes on top of the fact that Republicans have taken a sledgehammer to the healthcare system. They have made the biggest cuts in the history of our country. Hospitals closing, laying off some staff, canceling services lines like labor and delivery care. My office actually releases a monthly casualty report on all the damage Republican cuts are doing to American health care, and you can see the consequences everywhere. States are wrestling with impossible choices now, in effect, filling in the health care hole or cutting other essentials like public safety, Robert Kennedy has been an enabler, and he’s been a bystander for all of these cuts, as well as Republicans continued allegiance to Big Pharma. […] RFK is up to his eyeballs in conflicts of interest. For example, he is part of an anti-vaccine lawsuit. He handed his role in the case to a family. So Robert Kennedy’s family profits over the lawsuit. A conflict of interest, a major one. That’s not the kind of person who should be in this position, I believe you ought to resign.”
U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier, M.D. (D-WA-08): “I am the first pediatrician in Congress, and a year ago, prior to RFK Jr’s confirmation, I was really proud to join 314 Action and call out how dangerous it would be for our nation’s health, especially for our children, if RFK Jr were to be confirmed as Secretary of HHS. And tragically, he has been just as destructive, if not more so than we had worried. In just a year, he has done unparalleled damage to our nation’s public health, and this is nothing new for RFK Jr. For years, he has peddled misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and I just wanted to set the record straight here. Immunizations were one of the greatest advances in the 20th century, and they have saved millions of lives, including here in the United States, they are safe and they are effective. And as a pediatrician, I am so thankful that children, for the most part, no longer suffer from vaccine preventable diseases like polio and measles and meningitis, but RFK JR and his anti-vax influencers now have a platform, and they are eroding public trust in immunization and raising doubts where there should be none. And I saw this in my practice over 20 years as a practicing pediatrician, more nervous parents, more questions, desires to split up vaccines or have a slower schedule. And I answered those questions so patiently and reassured parents and built trust and got kids immunized. But I just want to be clear, those concerns just don’t pop out of nowhere. They were directly linked to the sort of propaganda that has been spewed by RFK JR and his allies, and now, as HHS Secretary, RFK Jr has real power. And he has used his office to elevate and empower conspiracy theorists to make national public health decisions. We saw this in full effect last June when RFK Jr fired every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. It is hard to overstate the importance of ACIP. This is a committee whose recommendations have guided our nation’s vaccination policy for over 60 years, and as a pediatrician, I have always relied on ACIP because I’ve known that I could always count on its members to deeply consider scientific data and make sound, informed, thoughtful recommendations. In response to this mass firing, I led 86 of my colleagues, including every Democratic doctor in Congress, in demanding that he reinstate all 17 members to ACIP and uphold his oath for the American people to protect our health. But he has continued to take us down a dangerous path by packing the committee with a whole bunch of new members, many of whom wear their anti-vax ideology like a badge of honor. And since their very first meeting, they have made clear that they are incompetent and unqualified for this important job. They’re already making reckless changes to our nation’s vaccination policy and so now, as a pediatrician, I am worried that children will be growing up in a world that is more dangerous, that children will suffer from preventable illnesses and that they will die preventable deaths. And I’ve treated patients with measles and with meningitis and with pertussis, when we tell you these are terrible, life-threatening illnesses, and we should be so grateful that they have become rare. Kids with measles, they’re miserable, they have high fevers, and they can suffer long term brain damage, and you already know they can get pneumonia and die, because we’ve seen deaths already this year in our country. Kids with pertussis, they cough so hard they vomit and they break ribs, and they cough for 100 days. And little babies who get pertussis or whooping cough, they just stop breathing. Babies with meningitis, they’re these babies who come in with fevers and they’re floppy and you don’t know what’s going on. And it used to be so common for us to do blood tests and urine tests and spinal taps on these babies with fevers and now, thanks to vaccinations, it is rare, but all of that is going to change if RFK Jr gets his way. I mean, those are just three of the serious diseases that vaccinations protect children from it, and this newly formed ACIP has already made big changes to the standard childhood vaccine schedule, and I am so fearful that this committee is going to continue to go further, and soon, measles and pertussis and meningitis and polio and other preventable illnesses are once again going to gain a foothold in this country, and children are going to needlessly and tragically, get sick and die. We’re already seeing this as we face the largest outbreak of measles in decades. Pertussis is on the rise all over this country, and on top of this, RFK Jr’s hand-picked ACIP has made dangerous changes to the hepatitis B vaccine recommendation that will put newborns at risk for chronic hepatitis B and early illness, liver cancer and death. And I am so worried that because of the ill-informed changes to the Covid-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women now we’re going to see women and their babies at high risk. Last year, I had the opportunity to question RFK Jr in committee, and I made it clear to him that I will lay responsibility for every death from vaccine preventable illness at his feet, and I will hold him accountable. And at times like this, we just really need voices of reason and common sense, who will continue to speak to the public, with the public, and who will continue to hold this administration accountable. And I just want you to know that I will continue to fight in Congress on behalf of our children and our nation’s public health, and I will stand up against RFK Jr, wherever and whenever necessary, and I will fight this administration’s dangerous attacks on science and our health.”
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel: “In the last year, RFK Jr has made America demonstrably less healthy through an avalanche of misinformation, fear, uncertainty and doubt, he has undermined the trust in the scientific basis for government decisions and policies. He’s politicized decisions, and he’s made substantial cuts on a political basis. This is all going to come back. It has already made us less healthy. It is actually going to make us less healthy for years and decades to come, and the damage will be done. We should remember the first thing he did was to hollow out the workforce at HHS, to cut 19,000 people who have left in 2025 either because they’ve been fired or forced to resign. You cannot run an agency for 330 million people, which covers 20% of the GDP on 62,000 people, just impossible. We can take a look at the NIH, which everyone in America has faith in, cut 1200 jobs. Over half of the institutes and Senate centers do not have permanent directors, so they don’t have a strategic vision and they don’t go forward. There were cuts to lots of programs at the NIH, including mRNA, vaccines, even for cancer, cuts to grants for cancer doctors and research, cuts to Alzheimer’s, cuts to diabetes research, there was no vision of progress in the most important diseases affecting us. But cuts the FDA experienced 3500 cuts in jobs, politicized decisions through the national priority review program that said, basically the FDA commissioner is going to decide which drugs get fast, tracked and reviewed quickly, based upon their agreement with national priorities, not the way to go. And of course, he has devastated the CDC in oh so many ways. 25 to 33% of the workers have been fired, closing multitude of centers, Center for Chronic Disease Prevention, global health centers, multiple surveillance agencies, the forecasting Institute to monitor the world for any potential threats to United States Health, the National Institutes for occupational diseases, that monitors workplaces, and he has packed the advisory boards like the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the Autism Coordinating Committee, with people who have no credible qualifications but are politically aligned with his vision. He’s also prevented many of these committees from working the United States Preventative Services Task Force, two meetings that happened in July and November, canceled or postponed. Those are critical for making recommendations to Americans about cancer screenings and many other preventative measures, whether they have data and what are important. Canceled. 79 advisory committees, and 23 remain inactive. He’s also packed another committee which is very under the radar, but so important, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, so he can adjust what counts as an injury for vaccines, the brain pan is to add autism so that it bankrupts the advisor, the vaccine compensation committee, so companies get out of vaccine production, and we have seen the effect. Just the threat has forced Moderna to get out of vaccine production for infectious diseases that is going to make all of us less healthy as we go forward, as we all know, we have had a major avalanche of misinformation and fear surrounding the measles vaccine. Last year we had 20 276 cases of measles in the United States, a dramatic 100 fold increase. This year we are only six weeks in we are projected to have 8500 cases in 2026 of measles. We’ve had two deaths, three deaths last year, the last death before that was a decade before single death in 2015 and if with 8500 cases, who knows the measles vaccine is a miracle before we had hundreds of 1000s, up to 750,000 cases of measles a year, and it plummeted to basically under 100 after the introduction of the vaccine. In 1963 we had 10s of 1000s of hospitalizations, and those plummeted as well with the introduction of the vaccine, but we are going to have met much more measles. We already have 10 states below 90% immunization. Measles is going to spread throughout the country. The latest outbreak in South Carolina, where 95% of the people experiencing measles were unvaccinated, is going to continue. It’s not only measles that’s been a focus of many people, but there are other vaccines, the hepatitis B vaccine at birth given that prevents liver disease, liver failure and the need for a liver transplant or death that has been discouraged and fear surrounding it by RFK Jr. The consequence is people, years and decades from now, will die because of that vaccine, diphtheria, a disease we thought was gone zero out the vaccine rates have dropped from 95% just a few years ago to 92% in 2025. We are going to see a resurgence of this terrible vaccine for children and part of the campaign, many states, six states now have rolled back requirements to have vaccines to start school. We are going to see outbreaks, Mississippi, Louisiana, Idaho, Florida — really bad problems.”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director, APHA: “Mr. Kennedy’s tenure can best be described as chaotic, broken promises, administrative incompetence, professional neglect, which is a strong term when you think of him as an attorney, public health malpractice, bad science, disinformation, exclusion of expert advice, and he’s made less transparency and avoided public input in many of the things that they’ve done. Now he wants to bring these failed activities and affordability over the next year. He was at the Heritage Foundation just yesterday laying out what he’s going to do over the next year. And in fact, his actions so far this year have made things less transparent, more costly and lethal. People are sicker and are dying sooner because of his policy and programmatic decisions. You know, in my mind, he’s failed in his key role as the nation’s chief health official, running the nation’s top public health agency. He’s really, in many ways, proving himself to be an incompetent manager far too often. He doesn’t even know what’s going on in his own agency. He clearly has undermined the morale of his employees. He’s lost the trust not only of his workers, but many surveys have shown that he’s losing the trust of the American people, not only in just vaccines, but in other areas as well. On a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey, even 25% of Republicans say they don’t trust him. And the proof of this, of course, he tells us we should not trust him as well. The FDA, which regulates 20 cents out of every dollar the United States spends on consumers is every day increasingly become more dysfunctional. And clearly, the research enterprise in United States, which certainly was the best in the world, is falling rapidly behind other nations, despite the fact that Congress has held the line on funding cuts, but they’ve destroyed much of the well thought through infrastructure that we have to ensure that we get the best science out of the National Institutes of Health.”
Shaughnessy Naughton, President, 314 Action: “Before I founded 314 Action, I was an infectious disease researcher. I worked on trying to create new antibiotics, and that is a field of research that has been terribly underfunded and only gotten worse under this secretary. As we reflect on the first year of office under the Trump administration and RFK Jr, there’s not a whole lot to give us hope. By dismantling research funding in this country, they are undermining our ability to succeed in the future. Part of why we’re living through this biotech revolution is because of the investments we’ve made over the last 80 years in research and education that have provided tremendous advancements in health and medicine. 80 years ago, cancer was essentially a death sentence, and now we have cancer that we can cure or maintain, as well as vaccines that even can prevent cancer. And all of that is being undermined by a health secretary that, frankly, doesn’t believe anything that conflicts with his pseudoscience views on on health and science, and we have seen that demonstrated in the undermining of the vaccine schedule for children, that the confusion and chaos that he’s caused for a lot of parents just trying to keep their children safe, and the false hope that he’s given to many people by declaring things like, we’re going to know what the cause of autism is by September. This is not just this is no longer just a man operating under his name. This is the health secretary of the United States, and it’s doing tremendous damage to the health and welfare of the American people, and we see it most obviously in the unprecedented, you know, generation, in a generation level of measles cases that we’ve seen under his watch. And you know, part of what the Senator had asked in the confirmation hearing were, what were RFK Jr’s ties, financial ties to the anti-vaccine industry that he has, you know, frankly, profited off of for decades. And you know, we are still calling on him to clarify, what if any financial advantages he has by continuing this pursuit of undermining vaccine safety and vaccine use in this country, and it’s also why we launched RFK Watch at 314 Action to hold the secretary accountable and to expose him as the most dangerous Health and Human Services Secretary in history. […] Democrats have talked about healthier lifestyles and eating, particularly around children. It was a big part of Michelle Obama’s platform as First Lady. Let’s move. And the Republicans at the time treated it like it was this snow-flakey, wokey nonsense that should be ridiculed rather than embraced. So I don’t think anybody in this call doesn’t want to see better health for Americans, but you don’t get that by taking away food assistance for children, by cutting off Medicaid for our most vulnerable seniors and children for failing to extend tax rebates for the Affordable Care Act so people can actually afford the health insurance that helps to keep them to helps to keep them and their families safe and healthy. So I think we have to be very clear in what it is that they are promoting, and they are promoting a chaotic, unhealthy America that has people not knowing which way to even look for what’s coming next from this administration.”
Brad Woodhouse, President, Protect Our Care: “RFK Jr has made America sicker. He’s let measles get a foothold in the US again, he continues to undermine the efficacy of the measles vaccine. He’s undermined public trust in vaccines. He’s promoted dangerous conspiracy theories. He’s installed quacks can keep positions wreak havoc on our nation’s public health infrastructure. The idea that this charlatan would make America healthy again is BS, and it always was. And during the battle of his confirmation, we warned about everything that he would do – the vaccine schedule, about how he would undermine vaccines, about how he would undermine public health, about how he would install conspiracy theorists in key positions, how he would run off experts. And for some reason, he said he wouldn’t do any of those things. And Senator Cassidy bought it, and Senator Collins bought it, and Senator Murkowski bought it, and enough Republicans bought it. They bought his B.S., they confirmed him and then allowed him to do what he’s done. And now you know Senator Cassidy will hem and haw about the actions, and some other senators that voted for his confirmation, about what he’s doing with vaccines and conspiracy theories and everything else. And now of course we know that he lied in his testimony about what his role was in undermining vaccines in Samoa, taking his organization there at the time, and him taking advantage of a tragedy there. You know that Senators don’t want to say they regret voting for him, but they all do and you know they should really bow their heads in shame, because this was predicted.”
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