The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., avoided a question about vaccines on Wednesday and if he would choose to vaccinate his children today against a series of diseases, saying: “I don't think people should receive medical advice from me.”
Kennedy's comment was in response to the representative Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin, during an audience of the Chamber Assignments Committee.
In the midst of a continuous measles outbreak in western Texas and other parts of the USA, which killed two children and an adult, all not vaccinated, Kennedy has pushed unseeded remedies, including a steroid called Budesonid
None are proven measles treatments, experts say. The high doses of vitamin A can cause nausea, vomiting and liver damage, especially in young children.
Kennedy, sometimes, has offered a warm support of the measles-ba-rubella vaccine, but often undermines that message with false statements about damage and lack of long-term protection.
Kennedy told Pocan that “probably” will vaccinate his children against measles today, but added: “My opinions about vaccines are irrelevant.”
Pocan then asked Kennedy if he was vaccinating his children today against the chickenpox and the polio.
Kennedy refused to answer, saying: “I don't want to give advice.”
Kennedy's children are vaccinated, a decision that has previously said that he regrets.
Doctors consider widely that the three vaccines are safe and effective.
In her final comments, the representative of the Member of the Classification Committee, Rosa Delauro, D-Conn., Criticized her comments on vaccines, emphasizing that both Kennedy and HHS “make medical decisions every day” and pointed to the two children in the United States who died of measles this year.
“You are the secretary of the HHS. You have tremendous power over health policy,” he said. “Really horrible that will not encourage families to vaccinate their children, measles, chickenpox, polyomyelitis. Vaccines are one of the foundations of public health. Vaccines, yes, they save lives and the fact that the Secretary of Health and Human Services refuses to encourage children to be vaccinated is a tragedy.”
Public health experts also backed Kennedy's response.
Although Kennedy has no medical training, “the problem is that the upper line of its work description is the main health strategist of the nation,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, during a call with journalists on Wednesday. “His work is to give people the best advice they can.”
“I wonder what it would be like if the Secretary of Transportation refused to answer a question about whether it would fly,” said Dr. Marissa Levine, professor of public health practices at the University of Southern Florida, said on the same call.
The camera audience began what is expected to be a controversial day for Kennedy after budget cuts and mass layoffs in HHS. Kennedy is expected to testify in the afternoon before the Senate committee on health, education, work and pensions.
During the audience on Wednesday morning, Kennedy defended the response of the United States to measles outbreak, said the agency was doing a better job than other countries.
He pointed to the highest measles per capita in Mexico, Canada and Western Europe.
“Mexico has approximately the same number with a third of our population,” he said.
There have been more than 1,000 cases of measles in the United States so far this year. Measles was declared eliminated from the country in 2000. The only year since then, with more cases, it was 2019.
Experts say that numbers are probably a lower content because many cases are probably not reported.
