In the wake of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s firing of top CDC officials and cuts in mRNA vaccine research, Dr. Timothy Johnson (longtime network TV medical editor and founding editor of the Harvard Medical School Health Letter) has a message for a fellow doctor, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who’d promised oversight of Kennedy when he voted to confirm him:
Senator Cassidy: I reach out to you as one physician to another, hoping that your doctor’s heart can override your politics.
First, allow me to remind you of what you said to the Senate after deciding to vote in favor of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services: “If Mr. Kennedy is confirmed, I will use my authority as chairman of the Senate committee with oversight of HHS to rebuff any attempt to remove the public’s access to life-saving vaccines without iron-clad, causational, scientific evidence.”
I now urge you, Sen. Cassidy, to use that authority.
You also stated: “If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory committee on immunization practices’ recommendations without changes.”
Since you uttered those words, Kennedy has fired the highly-regarded and long-standing CDC committee advising on vaccines. Also, Kennedy’s recent decision to cut nearly $500 million in government funding for mRNA vaccine research and development – vaccines that were so effective in helping to stem the COVID-19 pandemic – is truly concerning.
In a video posted on social media last month, Kennedy said, “HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risk than benefits for these respiratory viruses.” Vaccine experts disagree, and have called the decision dangerous. Dr. Michael Osterholm, a world-renowned public health expert, described the funding cut as “one of the worst decisions I’ve seen in 50 years of public health preparedness work.”
Other experts stress the potential for mRNA technology in producing new life-saving drugs, even cancer treatments.
Senator Cassidy, I am pleading with you to do what you know in your physician’s heart is the right thing to do: use that authority as you promised, and call your committee into action before it is too late, and too many lives may be unnecessarily lost.
Story produced by Liza Monasebian. Editor: Chad Cardin.
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