The confirmation hearings for RFK Jr.’s nomination as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services are in the books. He spent six hours being questioned by senators last week in advance of the Senate Finance Committee vote on his nomination scheduled Tuesday.
Kennedy received the expected grilling on his past stands on vaccinations, and the most interesting part of the hearing was his back-and-forth with Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana. Cassidy, who is a doctor, practically begged Kennedy to disavow his long-held position that vaccines cause autism. Kennedy refused, although he did say that he could be convinced otherwise if only studies had been done on the issue. Cassidy pointed out that not only had there been studies of vaccine side effects, but he (Cassidy) had participated in one of those studies.
Almost all the senators who questioned Kennedy seemed to acknowledge his position on vaccines was troubling. The exception was Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who proudly announced that he was soon to be a grandfather and that his granddaughter “would not be a pincushion” and presumably wouldn’t be vaccinated against childhood diseases.
No senator asked the obvious question that came to this farmer's mind. If Kennedy’s opinions on vaccination are outside the mainstream, perhaps his opinions on the damage done by conventional farming might be just as flawed? If vaccines don’t cause autism, and they don’t, maybe Kennedy’s position on the dangers of Roundup, fertilizer, and corn syrup might be just as questionable?
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The parallels are easy to draw: Had any senator cared to do the work and taken the risk to stand up for farmers? The vaccine-autism link first appeared in a study by Andrew Wakefield, a British doctor and researcher. The study was discredited and withdrawn by the journal where it appeared. Wakefield lost his medical license.
The purported link between the herbicide Roundup and cancer was first publicized in a study by a French scientist named Giles Eric Seralini. That study was roundly criticized and eventually withdrawn by the journal where it first appeared. In both cases, RFK jr., a lawyer, has profited from legal cases brought using the discredited science as a basis for suit.
Incidentally, under questioning from the Senate panel, Kennedy admitted that he would maintain a financial interest in further legal cases tying vaccines to autism. The conflict of interest between a government official in charge of the agency that regulates drugs and a lawyer receiving contingency fees from lawsuits targeting drug companies is obvious and scary.
Instead of drawing the obvious conclusion that a crank on the subject of vaccines just might be a crank on the dangers of modern farming, senators have grabbed onto Kennedy’s indictment of the food system like a drowning man grabs a life preserver.
The incentive here is easy to understand. Who isn’t concerned about the increase in obesity? However, HHS is too important an agency to leave in the hands of a person as unqualified as Mr. Kennedy. As Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel pointed out, even senators who strongly support President Trump will be doing him a favor by voting no on this nomination.
Blake Hurst is a farmer and greenhouse grower in northwest Missouri.