Schatz: RFK Jr., Whose Dangerous Lies Fueled Measles Outbreak in Samoa & Caused Preventable Deaths, Unqualified To Lead HHS

WASHINGTON – Today on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) underscored the troubling record of President Donald Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose efforts in Samoa to deceive families about measles vaccines led to a deadly outbreak that killed more than 80 people, many of whom were young children. Schatz urged his colleagues to vote against RFK Jr. in tomorrow’s confirmation vote.

“It’s not often that the stakes of a vote to confirm a cabinet nominee are this high. But tomorrow, when we vote on the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the stakes will be life or death,” said Senator Schatz. “ Mr. Kennedy, in his words, but more importantly in his actions, has proven over and over that he is a unique danger to society. But he’s on the edge of becoming the country’s top health leader with the power to unleash bygone diseases and undermine trust in science for generations to come.”

“For the first time ever, we will have a Health Secretary who has actively helped cause outbreak instead of to contain them,” he continued. “We’ll have someone in charge of medical research who’s taken every opportunity to undermine science instead of promoting it. We’ll have someone who’s never come across a wacky idea that he didn’t like, whether it’s that antidepressants are causing mass shootings or that chemicals in the water are turning kids gay… Those two things should be immediately disqualifying.”

Schatz recounted the story of how Kennedy traveled to Samoa in 2019 to discourage people from taking the measles vaccine which ultimately led to an outbreak in which thousands of people were infected and 83, mostly children, died.

“It is so chilling to contemplate the idea that someone as recognizable as a Kennedy would fly across an ocean to a small, developing country and basically tell everybody, ‘Be afraid of this lifesaving medicine’,” Schatz concluded. “If you think it’s a good idea to leave all of these diseases in the rearview mirror, then this is a very bad person to have running the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Video of Senator Schatz’s remarks is available here.

The full text of Senator Schatz’s remarks, as delivered, is below.

It is not often that the stakes of a vote to confirm a cabinet nominee are this high. But tomorrow, when we vote on the nomination of RFK Jr. to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the stakes will be life and death. Mr. Kennedy, in his words, but more importantly in his actions, has proven over and over again that he is a unique danger to society.

But he is on the edge of becoming the country's top health leader, with the power to unleash bygone diseases and undermine trust in science for generations to come. For the first time ever, we will have a Health Secretary who has actively helped to cause outbreak instead of to contain them. We'll have someone in charge of medical research who has taken every opportunity to undermine science, instead of promoting it.

We'll have someone who's never come across a crazy idea that he didn't like, whether it's that antidepressants are the cause of mass shootings or chemicals in the water are turning children gay.

This is the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Those two things right there should be immediately disqualifying. This should be 100 to 0. This guy used to be a Democrat. This guy was pro-choice. This guy was for clean energy. This shouldn't be a partisan issue except to say for HHS, you need somebody who has devoted their life and hopefully has some expertise in the area of public health.

And it's not just that we didn't get someone who has expertise in public health. We have someone who has caused disease and death. And I say those words with precision. I understand that both sides of the aisle are prone to exaggerating their case, and being apocalyptic. When we describe a pending vote, I've been here for a while, and everything is always the most important vote that we will ever cast.

And I don't know if this is the most important vote we'll ever cast. I do think, gosh, I hope I'm wrong. I really do hope I'm wrong. But I do think this is likely the Cabinet Secretary vote that is likely to age the most poorly, because this person has the potential to actually cause diseases like rubella, like mumps, like measles, like polio, that have been gone for many generations because we have a vaccine regime.

And I want to tell you what he did in Samoa. In 2019, he flew to Samoa to discourage people from taking the measles vaccine. And the reason was that he wanted to run a quote, natural experiment to see how people would fare against the disease without protections. Now, some of you may know this. My father was the first whistleblower against the Tuskegee experiments in which the United States Public Health Service did a similar thing.

They knew that penicillin cured syphilis, and they knew that for the most part, untreated syphilis caused death. But the US Public Health Service decided to divide a cohort of African-American men into two parts. One would receive the medicine and be safe and be cured, and another cohort would receive a placebo and not get the lifesaving cure for syphilis.

And why did they do that? To quote, “observe the disease process”.

To observe the disease process. So when you when you investigate whether or not a medicine works, there's a whole process to it, right? The FDA double blind studies all the rest of it. But the basic idea is you're trying to get to some level of reliability and statistical significance so that you can project out into the population what's going to work and what's not.

Now, the second way to do this is say you can achieve statistical significance until you just let a bunch of people get sick and figure out what happens. The United States Congress, led by someone with whom I served for a couple of years, Tom Harkin, when they found out about the Tuskegee experiments, made a law against the U.S. Public Health Service ever doing that again because it's immoral.

It's bad science. Sure. But more than that, it treated these African-American men as if they were worth experimenting on, as if this this category of human beings in the United States were expendable for scientific research purposes. And that's exactly what happened in Samoa. And it's exactly what happened in Samoa.

6000 people got the measles. 83 people died. 79 of them were kids. It is so chilling to contemplate the idea that someone as recognizable as a Kennedy would fly across an ocean to a small, developing country and basically tell everybody, be afraid of this lifesaving medicine. And it's saw he did that once and said, I'm sorry I misunderstood or I'm being misunderstood.

This dude actually sells onesies on his website saying, I think it's like “unvaxxed and unafraid” for a little baby. This guy has views that are out of the mainstream of, I would guess, 99 out of 100 United States senators. And I do understand the pressure that some of my colleagues are facing. They're being told if you vote against one Trump nominee, you will be primaried.

So that's not a small amount of pressure. But this one, I just promise you, it's not going to age well.

Some of my colleagues are expressing reservations in private. And I think that's better than not expressing any reservations at all. And some of them are getting private assurances from Mr. Kennedy that he does not, in fact, hate all vaccines. He just wants to answer questions and all the rest of it. I am not reassured. I think this person has demonstrated over a pretty long career that he says whatever is convenient in the moment, right?

This is like an unreconstructed, he's a Kennedy. He was running for president in the Democratic primary, and now he's a Trump guy, like ten months later. What does that mean? It means he's got no core values, right? Like there's just no way to go from over here to over here politically in such a short period of time, except that he was offered something, and he was offered this job.

And why does he want this job? Because he's got a very specific view about public health.

And I just want to make one other point. The problem of our food system. Right. The problem of the extent to which we subsidize ultra-processed foods that are coming from commodities that are subsidizing the farm bill and causing people to get increasingly diabetic, and all the related health problems that happen related to that. Like, that's a really legitimate place to do some good bipartisan work.

And I would love to do that. It's also not what the HHS secretary does, what the United States Department of Agriculture does, for the most part, and it's what the Congress does. The problem is the farm bill. The problem is you get what you subsidize. And we are subsidizing all the corn products and all the soy products and all the sugar products that go into the lab tested extra delicious, extra bad for you, extra addictive stuff that is making us all.

Even though we're the wealthiest country in human history, a very unhealthy country. And so if that's all this guy we're working on, you can count me in. But if your idea of public health has to do with healthy food, has to do with prevention, has to do with understanding that our food system and our agricultural system and our USDA and our farm bill process is essentially broken.

You don't actually have to purchase this kind of crazy, evil stuff. You just don't you don't have to do it. There's lots of good people on the food system side. You can work with, work for, cheer on, organize with. But this man is going around… he's not talking about the COVID vaccine.

He's not talking about whether or not it's appropriate to require masks in public, where Democrats and Republicans are, like, still arguing about stuff like that. He's talking about stuff that like, if you're a parent and now you don't know whether when your kid goes to school, they've reached herd immunity for stuff that is like way, way, way generations back in the rearview mirror.

And so I don't know if this is going to mark one of the most important public health moments in American history, but I can't think of another time where we actually have the technology, we have the medicine, we have the science, we have the distribution system, we have the public infrastructure to keep people safe. And we just decide by a vote of 53 to 47 to make people unsafe.

So Secretary of Defense, DNI, all these are important. Treasury. Every cabinet position is important. It's going to be a little more challenging to know whether your vote is vindicated in the sweep of history. I think this guy is going to age very poorly in the job, because I think we are going to see bad public health outcomes very, very shortly.

This really is a matter of life and death. And I understand what I have learned over the last ten days is if Republicans are going to display courage, it's not going to be on the cabinet. There are a few that have voted, you know, not with their party, but for the most part, like they're in line, and Trump is going to get his cabinet.

But let this be a marker for everybody. Let today be a marker for everybody. If you even if you voted for Trump, if you didn't vote for Trump, if you're not a voter, it doesn't matter. If you think it's a good idea to leave all of these diseases in the rearview mirror, then this is a very, very bad person to have running the Department of Health and Human Services.

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