WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today released the following statement after voting no during a Senate Finance Committee mark-up on the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services:
There are a few issues that Mr. Kennedy and I agree on.
We agree on the need to stop the ultra-processed food industry from getting our kids addicted to unhealthy and dangerous products that cause obesity, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases.
We agree on the need to lower the outrageous prices we pay for prescription drugs in this country.
We agree that we should stop Big Pharma from being allowed to flood the airwaves with advertising.
But, despite those agreements, I cannot in good conscience vote for someone who denies and will dilute our public health protections, sow distrust in science and oversee massive cuts to health care programs for low-income people, nursing home care for seniors and long-term care for people with disabilities.
Despite what Mr. Kennedy believes, the overwhelming consensus within the scientific community is clear: Vaccines are safe and effective. Over the past 50 years, vaccines have saved the lives of over 150 million people throughout the world and reduced the infant mortality rate by 40%. Vaccines have not, as Mr. Kennedy has claimed, “poisoned an entire generation of American children.”
Vaccines do not, as Mr. Kennedy has claimed, cause autism. More than a dozen rigorous scientific studies from around the world involving hundreds of thousands of children have proven that.
The polio vaccine has not killed, as Mr. Kennedy has claimed, more people than polio ever did. The scientific community has found that the polio vaccine has saved 1.5 million lives and has prevented more than 20 million people from becoming paralyzed since 1988.
The COVID vaccine was not, as Mr. Kennedy has claimed, “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” The scientific community has found that the COVID vaccine saved over three million lives and prevented over 18 million hospitalizations in the United States alone.
In my view, we should listen to nearly 20,000 doctors who have told us that Mr. Kennedy has “a well-documented history of spreading dangerous disinformation on vaccines and public health interventions, leaving vulnerable communities unprotected and placing millions of lives at risk. His appointment is a direct threat to the safety of our patients and the public at large.”
We should listen to over 900 public health officials in 41 states who have urged us to prioritize science and reject Mr. Kennedy’s “dangerous” nomination.
We should listen to 77 Nobel Laureates who have told us that putting Mr. Kennedy in charge of HHS would “put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences, in both the public and commercial sectors.”
We must reject Mr. Kennedy’s nomination.
