Robert F. Kennedy Jr. makes final plea before US senators as key vote hangs in balance

Kennedy refused to flatly bash so.

“It’s nary concealed I person immoderate reservations connected your past positions connected vaccines and different issues,” Cassidy told the nominee.

Cassidy, of Louisiana, is considered to beryllium a important ballot for Kennedy to beryllium confirmed arsenic the Trump administration’s apical wellness official. He shared with Kennedy a idiosyncratic communicative astir an 18-year-old pistillate whose liver was failing from a hepatitis infection.

“It was the worst time of my aesculapian vocation due to the fact that I thought $50 of vaccines could person prevented this all.” Cassidy noted that Kennedy’s wide popularity and sanction designation had fixed him a almighty level for his views connected vaccines and said Kennedy’s advocacy had led radical to forego the COVID-19 vaccine.

He past bore into Kennedy’s views connected communal vaccines, Lyme illness and approvals for aboriginal vaccines.

“If you are approved to this position, volition you accidental unequivocally, volition you reassure mothers unequivocally and without qualification that the measles and hepatitis B vaccines bash not origin autism?” Cassidy asked.

Kennedy avoided answering directly, but said “if the information is there, I volition perfectly bash that.” Then, successful a uncommon amusement of across-the-aisle cooperation, Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, followed up connected Cassidy’s enactment of questioning.

Again, Kennedy refused to springiness a definitive answer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends infants person doses of the hepatitis vaccination.

In his opening remarks, Kennedy erstwhile again rejected the “anti-vaccine” statement and alternatively said helium is “pro-safety.” He repeated galore of the aforesaid lines helium offered to the Senate Finance Committee connected Wednesday.

Sanders, the elder number enactment subordinate connected the committee, pressed Kennedy to concede that wellness attraction was a quality right, arsenic his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncles, John F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy, had done. Kennedy again did not springiness a definitive answer.

Kennedy wants to pb the USD 1.7 trillion bureau that oversees wellness attraction sum — Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act marketplace — for astir fractional the country, approves past recommends vaccines for deadly diseases and conducts information inspections of nutrient and hospitals.