WASHINGTON -- Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. couldn't say Wednesday if he'd vaccinate his kids today against polio, the highly contagious and deadly virus that was once the leading cause of paralysis among children.
During testimony before a House subcommittee, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) asked Kennedy, who is notorious for spreading disinformation about the safety of vaccines, whether he'd vaccinate his children today, if they were still kids, against a number of vaccine-preventable diseases. Pocan started with measles.
"For measles?" Kennedy said, pausing. "Probably for measles."
"Would you vaccinate your child for chicken pox?" asked Pocan.
"I don't want to give advice," Kennedy replied. "I can tell you in Europe they don't use the chicken pox vaccine." (This is not true.)
What about polio, asked Pocan, which was eliminated from the U.S. in 1979?
"I don't want to be giving advice," said Kennedy.
The health and human services secretary insisted his opinions on vaccinating children were irrelevant to his job, which is literally to shape America's health policy.
"I don't think people should be taking medical advice from me," Kennedy said.
"Everybody can make that decision" on whether to vaccinate their kids, he said, and the problem with the health and human services secretary giving advice on vaccinations is that "it will seem like I'm giving advice to other people and I don't want to be doing that."
"But that is kind of your jurisdiction," Pocan replied with a puzzled smirk. "Because [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency Kennedy oversees] does give advice."
Kennedy has made all kinds of dangerous claims about vaccines for years. He said the HPV vaccine may increase the risk of cervical cancer and that the shot is "dangerous and defective," even as research consistently shows the vaccine is safe and highly effective in preventing cervical cancer.
He bizarrely claimed that the measles vaccine "contains a lot of aborted fetus debris and DNA particles," and falsely said "natural immunity" is more effective than a vaccine at providing lasting protection against the measles.
Kennedy is perhaps best known for spreading the false claim that vaccines are linked to autism, a notion that has been debunked time and time again.
His refusal to support the polio vaccine on Wednesday is particularly bonkers. Polio causes permanent paralysis and death, and the vaccine, which came about in the mid-1950s, has resulted in an estimated 20 million more people being able to walk today who would otherwise have been paralyzed. It's also prevented an estimated 1.5 million children from dying.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the committee, was visibly horrified by pretty much everything Kennedy was saying.
She called his views on vaccines "quackery" and ripped his unserious response to the current U.S. measles outbreak. Since January, cases of measles have surpassed 1,000 people for the first time in 30 years and spread to at least 31 states. Three people have died, all of whom were unvaccinated.
This outbreak is spreading "while you peddle unfounded and dangerous vaccine skepticism, spread lies and misinformation," DeLauro said.
The two briefly sparred after Kennedy's claim that HHS is "doing a better job at CDC today than any nation in the world at controlling this measles outbreak."
DeLauro took issue with his definition of "Europe" as a point of comparison. She said he keeps saying "Europe" when he actually means the World Health Organization's regional office for Europe, which includes 53 countries in Europe and Asia, including some with low vaccination rates that have never eliminated measles.
The U.S. declared measles eliminated in 2000 after a successful vaccination campaign.
"If you compare us to Western [European] countries that we often compare ourselves to, like Great Britain, they have seen no measles deaths this year," she said.
By the end of the hearing, DeLauro told Kennedy it was a "tragedy" that he isn't advising parents to protect their kids against vaccine-preventable diseases. She was baffled by his claim that people shouldn't look to him for medical advice.
"HHS makes medical decisions every day. You're making medical decisions every day. You're the secretary of HHS," said the Connecticut Democrat. "You have tremendous power over health policy."
"I'm really horrified that you will not encourage families to vaccinate their children," she said.