Bernie Sanders holds roundtable to derail RFK at HHS
Paul Offit: Kennedy wants "to scare parents about vaccine safety"
On January 22nd there was a meeting on Capitol Hill with the title, ROUNDTABLE ON VACCINES AND PUBLIC HEALTH
It was called by U.S. Senator, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and it lasted an hour and a half.
While a good portion of the discussion was on how vaccines are safe and have saved millions of lives, there was equal time given to the growing issue of “vaccine hesitancy” and what to do about it. The term “misinformation” was a major theme. I also noticed the claim of “anti-science denialism.”
Panelists included Dr. Paul Offit, Dr. Greg Gonsalves, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein and Catherine Kennedy, RN.
Paul Offit was introduced by Sanders as “a pediatrician and expert on vaccines who serves as Director of the Vaccine Education Center, professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia.”
Of course anyone who’s been involved in vaccine safety concerns knows that Offit is the go-to-guy when it comes to defending vaccines. The glaring omission from the introduction was any mention of the personal fortune he made with the invention of a rotavirus vaccine, which in reality makes him an industry spokesman.
Regardless of the title, it was clear from the start that this was nothing but propaganda intended to raise concerns about having Robert Kennedy as the head of Health and Human Services.
At one point, Dr. Gonsalves said, “We’re not supposed to talk about RFK,” which I thought was strange because Kennedy was the main topic of discussion.
I transcribed a portion of the meeting.
1:08:20 Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) asked Catherine Kennedy,
My question to you, Ms Kennedy, the nurse, how hard will it be to convince people to get vaccinated if the Secretary of Health and Human Services is saying vaccines may not be safe? How much harder will that make your life?
Kennedy:
Senator, I’ve been a nurse for 45 years, and it is about relationship building and trust, and over the years—I’ve been in the neonatal intensive care unit for 20 plus years. It was important to first get that trust of the parent, and it is about constantly talking to them about what the expectations are. . . .
Markey:
Will it make it harder if Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the Secretary of Health and Human Services? He’s raising questions about the safety of these vaccines.
Kennedy:
No, because we’re trusted. Nurses are trusted. We have that relationship. Is it going to take more energy and work? Yes, but that is something that I think that we have to do because to me, the benefits outweigh the risks. . . .
Markey:
Dr. Offit, what is the impact of disseminating misinformation regarding vaccines, if Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the Secretary of Health and Human Services?
How time intensive is it to combat misinformation with your patients?
Offit:
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., when he founded Children’s Health Defense, did it specifically because he is trying to get information out there to scare parents about vaccine safety or to undermine vaccine efficacy. He’s been doing this for 20 years, and he’s good at it.
He’s definitely eroded confidence in vaccines. The mere notion that he may be Secretary of Health and Human Services has made it even harder just recently.
I have many more questions than I did before because before he had the advantage of having a famous name; now he has the advantage of being considered for this position.
At least for me, he’s made it much harder. I really worry about this. You’re already seeing the effects of that. You’re already seeing an erosion in vaccine rates, and so the question is: How bad does it have to get before we realize we have made a terrible mistake.
He means it. He’s a zealot. He believes that we have traded infectious diseases in for chronic diseases.
He’s a believer. He sees someone on a hiking trail, and he goes up, who’s holding a baby, and he tells the parent, ‘Don’t vaccinate this child.’ And he will say, I believe I’ve saved this child.
This is not the person who can be the head of Health and Human Services. I’m sorry, I know I’m not supposed to—
Markey:
I agree with you 100 percent. This dissemination of misinformation is very dangerous because parents are going to be relying on the experts. Otherwise it’s going to have to be a retail effort by doctors and by nurses in order to get out the facts.
Gonsalves:
There will be other kinds of appointments made in this administration . . . throughout the HHS bureaucracy into the White House, etc.
The target here is misinformation, right? We can play whack-a-mole with Robert F. Kennedy or Dave Weldon or any of the other nominees that are in line to take over HHS agencies.
We have to have a way to prospectively and constructively fight back against misinformation, because in four years, after this administration is gone, we are still going to have misinformation to deal with.
So we need a constructive plan of moving ahead together, clinicians, epidemiologists, politicians, public health officials, to do this.
Yes, there are imminent threats, and it’s just about one person. It’s about a whole set of people who could erode our confidence in vaccines, destroy key programs that are about vaccination in this country, but let’s keep our target on misinformation.
Markey:
If Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the Secretary of Health and Human Services and then his philosophy is spread across the entire federal health infrastructure in our country, how dangerous would that be when it comes to the public having confidence in vaccines?
Sharfstein
I have three types of concerns, whether it’s Robert F. Kennedy or others who have expressed similar views.
One is their understanding of how vaccine work and whether vaccines work because there have been statements made that vaccines haven’t made a difference, In fact, as we’ve all talked about today, they’re so critically important. . . .
At times he has departed greatly from scientific understanding of the value of vaccines.
The second is about vaccine safety, saying things that are false, misleading about what vaccines could do.
And the third, which I think sort of tends to come with the other two sometimes, is attacks on the people who are responsible for keeping vaccines safe and effective. . . .
There have been very unfair statements about whether they are corrupt or whether they are stupid, all kinds of accusations about them. It’s demoralizing to the people who do that work.
There are many people in that whole process who—
Marky:
Who are those people in our public health system?
Sharfstein:
Well, they’re nurses, they’re doctors, they’re scientists at the CDC, at the FDA, other parts of HHS.
They wake up every day with the goal of keeping kids healthy and protected in this country.
The things that have caused me concern about him in particular, but more generally, are effectiveness statements, safety statements, and statements that I think are totally unjustified and unfair attacking the very people whose job it is to keep us safe.
Marky
I think Robert F. Kennedy is dangerous and unqualified to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, especially in this era where disease can travel from country to country, continent to continent just in a plane ride.
We need people who can respond, and you mentioned, Dr. Gonsalves, the bird flu. If it explodes, we’re going to need to have some confidence, especially in those people who should be vaccinated. . . .
I’m just very afraid of Robert F. Kennedy’s candidacy.
Sanders:
Give us a worst case scenario. If you have a very articulate, aggressive leadership in this country casting doubt about the efficacy of vaccines, so what? What happens? Is it a big deal? Are you worried about it, is it not something we should be concerned about? . . .What could go wrong?
Gonsalves:
This is beyond vaccines. We’re not supposed to talk about RFK, but RFK questions the fundamental basis of germ theory. He’s going back to the 19th century miasthma, bad air that causes health conditions from chronic to infectious diseases.
So we need leadership to face—we’re 42nd in life expectancy in the U.S., and we’re going down. This is pre-COVID. We have existing public health disparities that we need to face, and we need to base it on science.
And if you have leadership, whether it’s at HHS or it’s in the White House, the question is, the fundamental scientific integrity of the work we do as public health officials and as clinicians, we’re in deep trouble.
It’s going to be hard to quantify, whether it’s infectious disease outbreaks or changes in public health inspection practices, funding to local, state and health departments. You could make a whole list of things that could happen beyond vaccines.
We’re not in a good situation and sugar coating it is something we don’t want to do, but we have a major problem ahead of us and we’re going to have to face it together.” . . .
Panelists talked about childhood mortality in the past and diseases coming back.
Offit:
Measles. Measles is the one that is going to come roaring back. It’s the most contagious of the vaccine preventable diseases. . . .
Offit went on to describe how contagious measles is.
Sanders:
Explain to people. If there is a major measles epidemic in this country in five years, what does that mean? What does it look like?
Offit:
It means children die. The mortality of measles is about one per thousand. So right now, we’re at about 300 cases. Get to 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 cases, children will once again die of measles. . . I’m afraid we’re about to see measles land.
Gonsalves:
One of the executive orders that came out recently was taking back vaccine refusers into the American military, and I talked about George Washington and how he inoculated all the troops against small pox.
If we start seeing vaccine refusal take beyond COVID vaccines in the American military, we have to talk about its implications on defense.
People in our military take many, many more vaccines than many of us take in our course of our lifetimes.
Yes, many dead children, but this has expansive, far-reaching consequences for American society and our place in the world.
Gonsalves should be interested in the fact that back in March, 2023, it was announced that 80 percent of American youth were unfit for military service.
The United States has seen military enlistment numbers drop and there’s a big reason behind that. According to a study from the Department of Defense, 80% of Americans between the ages of 17 to 24 are unfit for military service.
Reasons people have been deemed unfit are being overweight, drug use, or physical and mental health. . . .
The panel continued talking about the impact of measles.
Marky lectured on the improvement in public health and mortality rates in the past century, then he asked the panel,
If you had a vote on whether or not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services for the United States of America in 2025, would you vote yes or no.
Offit:
I would vote, hell no.
Sharfstein:
. . . My concerns are based on how far, what he has said and done, and departs from what’s understood in science, and particular his attacks on the people who are trying to protect us.
Gonsalves:
. . . Let’s put this clearly, this candidate is so far out of the mainstream of previous occupants of this office, Republican or Democrat, that the case is clear about what should happen.
Marky:
And we will take that as a no.
Sanders:
I think the point of what we’re trying to do today is to make it clear that we potentially face a massive health hazard, maybe especially for our children. And I think the point that Senator Marky made a moment ago, what was it? Back in 1900, 18 percent of kids never made it to five? That’s just an enormous reality that has to be addressed.
So in other words, we have made, with all of the problems we have today, and there are many, we have made enormous progress in public health and in saving children’s lives. And what in a sense I’m hearing from all of you is that is in danger, that we might revert back to those terrible days when so many children at the age of one or two or three.
So that is where we are at. . .
Here is a minute and a half clip of the discussion I also found online.
Senator Bernie Sanders, (I-VT):
Let us be clear. There is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that vaccines have saved millions of lives, prevented massive human suffering and stopped the spread of infectious diseases like polio, smallpox and measles.
Despite these enormous achievements, an increasing number of Americans have started to raise questions about vaccines that I hope our panelists will be able to answer today.
Dr. Greg Gonsalves:
Every minute six children are saved by vaccines around the world. Over the past 50 years, that adds up to 150 million children’s lives spared from death.
Catherine Kennedy, RN, President, CA Nurses Assoc.:
Vaccine hesitancy is leading to a resurgence of previously eradicated disease, and in just recent years, cases of measles, polio, pertussis have exploded all around the world.
Dr. Paul Offit:
So I’m scared that what’s happening now, that children are in the probably most dangerous position they’ve been in recent years.
Dr. Joshua Sharfstein:
Each component of the national vaccine effort is important. We cannot take them for granted. Going backward would expose millions of children to the risk of devastating disease. We have to counter misunderstanding and outright falsehoods about vaccines so that the American people can understand what’s at stake.
Sanders:
With all of the problems that we have today, and there are many, we have made enormous progress in public health and in saving children’s lives.
And what in a sense I’m hearing from all of you is that is in danger, that we may revert back to those to those terrible days when so many children died at the age of one, two or three.
Offit:
So vaccines have saved our lives. We live 30 years longer than we did 100 years ago.
Gonsalves:
I’m no fan of Big Pharma. The point is that vaccines are being developed by people who have a mission to prevent infectious diseases in children and others who are susceptible to infectious diseases
The whole ruse of conflict of interest is just that. It’s a distraction from the lifesaving ability of vaccines. And I’m saying that as someone who has a healthy disrespect for institutions like the drug companies in the United States.
The truth is this was a like replay of a 1930s Soviet show trial where the defendant (Kennedy) was presumed guilty. I’m sure this is why RFK wasn’t allowed to be there. No one was interested in his views.
My Wisconsin Senator, Tammy Baldwin, asked a leading question of Sharfstein, assuming that vaccines are unquestionably safe and effective.
How do we reassure folks that these vaccines are carefully watched after approval?
Sharfstein:
Vaccines are assessed and monitored more carefully pretty much than everything else in American medicine. . . .
One of the major systems that exists is called the Vaccine Safety Datalink. . . .
This is a database, a process for deeply investigating any concerns that come up and figuring out whether it’s truly caused or it’s coincidental.”
Baldwin asked about who’s watching the databases, and Sharfstein said,
The systems are supervised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by the Food and Drug Administration. . .
The VSD contains records from HMOs around the country for millions of children. It would be easy to determine the medical outcomes of interventions, including vaccines, BUT…
The truth is, the VSD is NOT accessible to independent researchers. Only CDC approved research efforts are allowed to use this database.
The people who run the vaccine program have the final say over who gets to look at this information. So where is the transparency?
One Senator asked about the parents who are worried about a link between vaccines and autism.
Offit responded that there is no link. A “discredited UK researcher named Andrew Wakefield” linked the MMR vaccine to autism.
Offit said Wakefield “had misrepresented clinical data, some of those children actually had symptoms of autism before they ever got the vaccine.”
Offit talked about “the retrospective studies that have been done . . . where you look at children who did or didn’t get the vaccine . . .” and which, we were to assume, showed no link. He made it sound like there have been comparison studies of vaccinated and unvaccinated kids showing no difference in autism rates.
This performance in support of vaccines and denigrating Kennedy must have made industry bigwigs happy, but the one thing I know about what goes on in DC is that, at the end of the day, everyone just goes home.
Having been to Washington several times, and having transcribed lots of congressional hearings on this subject over the past 20+ years, I know it’s all transitory.
We got to hear once again that vaccines are safe and effective and not in any way connected to autism.
Of course autism, whose cause is an eternal mystery, doesn’t matter at all to these people. Everything’s fine. Just keep on vaccinating.
YOUR THOUGHTS?
Wow. I feel sick watching the garbage video. It's hard to watch. I bet he would have loved to have Fauci at his side. I also think the Pharma bribes reflect a much smaller amount of money(maybe it represents 1 year or 2) than shown and over many years they paid out a lot more. If they believe what they're saying, they are idiots, but in all likelihood they don't and it's their gravy train. And the population suffers year aftr year as a result. Thanks Anne for showing us this.
It is not hard to visualize that the Sanders Roundtable participants and discussion about the science surrounding vaccines is not much different than the ACIP, VRBPAC, CBER, process that recommend vaccine approval and dismiss any concerns regarding safety or adverse effects. The forgone conclusion of the roundtable, RFK Jr. is dangerous to the one size fits all, more jabs better, paradigm that underpins regulatory policy.
Unavoidably unsafe vs safe and effective is the discussion that has never been allowed to proceed on the Federal or state level.