Schatz: Senate Must Stop RFK Jr.’s Dangerous Nomination

WASHINGTON – Ahead of confirmation hearings this week on the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) again urged his colleagues to vote no, highlighting Kennedy’s pivotal role in causing a measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019, which resulted in over 5,700 people getting infected and 83 people – mostly young children – dying.

“The unique threat that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. poses to our country really cannot be overstated. And now it is up to us, the 100 members of the United States Senate, to deny him the opportunity to use America as one big test lab for bygone diseases,” said Senator Schatz. “I understand my Republican colleagues are facing a lot of pressure from within. But this nomination is not actually like the others. Look at what he's done. Time and time again, he's abandoned every physician's first principle: Do no harm. He has caused disease. He has caused pain. He has caused death.”

Senator Schatz continued, “The vote we're going to be taking on this nominee is much more than your party or mine. It's life or death. And I promise you, if this person is confirmed, it will not age well: not in a Republican primary, not in a Democratic primary, not in your family, not in your community. Nowhere will an RFK ‘aye’ vote age well. This person is going to cause disease across the United States. I urge a no vote.”

Schatz likened Kennedy’s desire to run a “natural experiment” to see how people in Samoa would fare against the measles without protection to the Tuskegee experiment, in which the United States Public Health Service purposefully withheld treatment from men with syphilis in order to study the disease’s progression. The first person to raise the alarm about the cruelty of the experiment in 1965 was Schatz’s father, Dr. Irv Schatz.

“I never thought that 60 years later, I'd be standing in the very body that passed legislation in response to that shameful period, arguing against confirming someone who wants to replicate that experiment at scale. That's what RFK Jr. wants to do. He wants to use Americans as lab rats in a national experiment. And if it means bringing back the measles or the mumps or rubella or polio, so be it. That is the cost of doing business, as he sees it,” said Senator Schatz.

A transcript of Senator Schatz’s remarks is below. Video is available here.

If you heard your doctor say, ‘there's no vaccine that is safe or effective.’ Or ‘there are much better candidates than HIV for what causes AIDS.’ Or ‘school shootings started happening with the introduction of Prozac and other drugs.’ If your physician said any of those things to you, you would look for a new physician.

And yet, this week, my colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee and Health Committee are going to consider the nomination of someone who's not only said all those things – and more. But if confirmed, he would be responsible for the health and well-being of the entire nation.

The unique threat that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. poses to our country really cannot be overstated. And now it is up to us, the 100 members of the United States Senate, to deny him the opportunity to use America as one big test lab for bygone diseases. And I want to explain what I mean by that. He thinks that FDA trials are not enough to determine the efficacy of a vaccine. And so he's suggesting that we use placebo in the population. What does that mean? Something might save someone's life, and something might be essentially a sugar pill. But you don't get to know. There are international conventions against this approach. The Tuskegee experiments conducted by the United States Public Health Service were universally rejected, and the Congress banned this approach because you cannot withhold lifesaving care from anyone.

Now, saying crazy things doesn't seem to be disqualifying for a nominee these days, I understand. But it's not just that he said crazy things or holds deranged views. It's that he has acted on them. And I want everybody to listen to what exactly happened in Samoa – not 20 years ago, not ten years ago, but in 2019. While he was chairman of the anti-vaccine group, he flew to Samoa because he sensed an opportunity to exploit people's hesitations about taking the measles vaccine.

People were understandably worried after an accident… involving improperly prepared vaccines killed two babies. It was a tragedy, and it was a costly mistake, but not a reason to abandon the measles vaccine altogether. But RFK sought to make people more afraid. He discouraged people from taking the vaccine because he wanted to run a “natural experiment.” To see how people fared against the disease without protection. To see how people fared against the disease without protection? This guy is up for HHS, Health and Human Services? This guy just wants to see what would happen if we didn't give people the lifesaving protection that they need. He literally flew to the other side of the planet to turn people's fears into a data collection opportunity.

For some context here. Samoa is a small country and had a population of around 200,000 people at the time. People knew each other and word got around fast. A Kennedy was in town saying a thing. And so it was no small thing that this man from America, with the last name Kennedy, pretending to be a health expert, was there peddling all kinds of lies to prevent people from getting a lifesaving vaccine.

And those lies spread fast. Vaccination rates plummeted, and within five months, Samoa had a measles outbreak. 5,700 people were infected with the measles. 83 people died. Almost all of them were children. That was the conclusion of Mr. Kennedy's natural experiment. Children died. This isn't some ancient history I'm digging up here. This was less than six years ago, and it is alarmingly reminiscent of one of the darkest chapters in our country's history with the Tuskegee experiment.

For 40 years, beginning in 1932, the United States Public Health Service ran an experiment with 600 black men in Alabama. The majority of them had syphilis, and the objective was to “observe the disease process.” And so even when penicillin became the standard of care in 1947, the men who needed that treatment, who could have been given lifesaving care, were denied penicillin. Researchers did nothing as men died and they went blind because they wanted to see how the disease would develop. A natural experiment.

It took a young doctor, not long out of medical school, who read about the study in a medical journal and couldn't believe his eyes. He could not understand how the United States government had come to view these poor sharecroppers as expendable, as subhuman. He thought about the Hippocratic Oath, that he and every doctor like him had sworn to. What happened to, “first, do no harm”?

And so, not knowing what else to do, but knowing he was risking a whole lot by speaking out, he wrote to the study's authors. And I want to read a bit of what he wrote: “I'm utterly astounded by the fact that physicians allow patients with a potentially fatal disease to remain untreated when effective therapy is available. I assume you feel that the information which is extracted from the observation of this untreated group is worth their sacrifice. If this is the case, then I suggest the United States Public Health Service and those physicians associated with it in this study need to reevaluate their moral judgments in this regard”.

The man who wrote that letter, and was the first, and for a long time, the only person to sound the alarm about the depravity of the Tuskegee experiment was my dad, Dr. Irv Schatz. It's one of the many reasons that he's my hero. But I never thought that 60 years later, I'd be standing in the very body that passed legislation in response to that shameful period, arguing against confirming someone who wants to replicate that experiment at scale. That's what RFK Jr. wants to do. He wants to use Americans as lab rats in a national experiment. And if it means bringing back the measles or the mumps or rubella or polio, so be it. That is the cost of doing business, as he sees it.

I understand my Republican colleagues are facing a lot of pressure from within. It's a new administration, and you want to give them deference. An executive, generally speaking, gets to have their team. But this nomination is not actually like the others, even if you don't want to take Mr. Kennedy's words so literally, maybe you think he's just wondering aloud, look at his actions. Look at what he's done. Time and time again, he's abandoned every physician's first principle: Do no harm. “I shall do by my patients as I would be done by. And I shall minimize suffering whenever a cure cannot be obtained.” That's part of the oath every medical student takes at graduation before they can practice. And yet, the person nominated to lead the country's entire health system has consistently done the exact opposite. He has caused disease. He has caused pain. He has caused death.

And so the vote we're going to be taking on this nominee is much more than your party or mine. It's life or death. And I promise you, if this person is confirmed, it will not age well: not in a Republican primary, not in a Democratic primary, not in your family, not in your community. Nowhere will an RFK ‘aye’ vote age well. This person is going to cause disease across the United States. I urge a no vote.

###