Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed at least one thing during his tour of Congress on Wednesday: His longtime skepticism of vaccines and other public health interventions has not diminished, despite what he may have said during his confirmation hearings.
“I am not going to just tell people everything is safe and effective if I know there’s issues,” Kennedy told Sen. Chris Murphy when he was repeatedly asked during his testimony to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions if he was currently recommending the measles vaccine.
Kennedy insisted that he’d recommended the measles vaccine during his hearing before the House Appropriations Committee earlier in the day. But Kennedy made no such statement — he said his opinion on vaccines was “irrelevant” when asked if he would personally vaccinate his children now.
The secretary also reiterated what issues, specifically, he finds in vaccines. When Murphy described the statements Kennedy has made about the measles vaccine in the past — that its efficacy quickly wanes, that it contains “fetal debris,” that it wasn’t tested against a placebo — Kennedy responded promptly.
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“All true,” he said.
Scientists have found that the measles vaccine does not quickly wane, that it does not contain fetal debris and it was tested against a placebo. But Kennedy seemed more eager to talk about his unfounded views on vaccines than he did during past committee hearings when he was reliant on senators’ confirmation votes — and certainly more eager to talk about vaccine safety than about the sweeping cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services proposed by him and Elon Musk’s DOGE.
At times, Kennedy seemed frustrated by senators grilling him on the cuts, raising his voice to Sen. Maggie Hassan and Sen. Patty Murray. (His voice was not the only one raised in the hearing room: Kennedy’s opening statements were interrupted by protestors shouting, “RFK kills people with AIDS.”)
Kennedy implied that he was not the one to blame for at least some of the changes at his department. When asked by Murray about cuts to the work of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Kennedy said he “did not want to see it end.”
But like he did earlier Wednesday, Kennedy tried to punt questions about cuts, instead blaming a court order issued by a judge Tuesday that instructed HHS to pause work on the restructuring Kennedy proposed in March.
“My attorneys have asked me not to talk about any details of the reorg today,” Kennedy told Sen. Susan Collins.
At other times, Kennedy took advantage of a well-worn technique: flat out denial.
“As far as I know, we have not fired any working scientists …people who were actually doing science,” Kennedy told Sen. Bill Cassidy when asked about the proposed cuts, which would result in 20,000 personnel leaving the department. Many agency staff, including working scientists, have already either been cut or had their contracts lapse.
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Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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