Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) still can't quite face the reality of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Laura Brett/ZUMA
Back in February, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) went to great lengths to justify his decisive vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary.
Cassidy, a physician and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, demanded, among other things, that if confirmed, Kennedy would ensure the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website did not edit a webpage stating that vaccines do not cause autism.
Of course, under Kennedy’s leadership, the CDC did just that this week, as my colleague Kiera Butler covered:
Among other dubious assertions, [the new webpage] informed readers, “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” Also, it asserts, falsely, “Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”
Despite Kennedy’s flagrant flouting of this apparent agreement with Cassidy, the senator still cannot seem to directly criticize him, or own up to the fact that he played a key role in elevating a conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic with no medical training to head the country’s health agencies.
On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Cassidy refused to face the facts when host Jake Tapper said, “Dr. Cassidy, he lied to you.” Instead, Cassidy doubled down on the very message that Kennedy is undermining: “Vaccines are safe,” he insisted. “That’s the most important message.”
After Tapper pressed him, asking if he was worried about the impact the CDC website could have on Americans’ decisions whether or not to vaccine, Cassidy conceded that the messaging was a problem, but still refused to name Kennedy as its source or express regret over confirming him. “Anything that undermines the understanding, the correct understanding, the absolute scientifically based understanding that vaccines are safe and that, if you don’t take them, you’re putting your child or yourself in greater danger, anything that undermines that message is a problem,” Cassidy said.
He proceeded to downplay the importance of the website, claiming that he has “never met any parent who wasn’t a pediatrician as well who actually reads the CDC website”—even though, as Tapper pointed out, Cassidy made it a condition of Kennedy’s confirmation that he would not edit the website. After more tough questioning from Tapper, Cassidy conceded: “[The changes to the website] are important, because you need to send the consistent signal that vaccines are safe.” He then pointed to an asterisk that remains on the site, which says: “The header ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ has not been removed due to an agreement with [Cassidy] that it would remain on the CDC website.”
So, in case you’re confused about all this hair-splitting: Yes, the updated webpage now dismisses the claim that vaccines do not cause autism—contradicting the site’s own (correct) heading. This is apparently the extent to which Cassidy managed to reign Kennedy in.
Changes to the CDC website were not the reason Kennedy made even more headlines this week. There was also the heartbreaking essay from his cousin, Tatiana Schlossburg, published by the New Yorker on Saturday, in which she revealed her terminal cancer diagnosis and excoriated Kennedy for defunding cancer research and clinical trials and attacking vaccines and medications she benefitted from. The 35-year-old mother of two and daughter of former Ambassador Caroline Kennedy—who last year urged the Senate not to confirm Kennedy as HHS Secretary—wrote that she “watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government.”
Faced with Schlossburg’s unflinching criticism of her own family member, Cassidy still refused to directly criticize Kennedy. “Clearly, this conversation, you want me to be on the record saying something negative,” he told Tapper.
“I know it’s titillating,” Cassidy said later, “but I think we need to move beyond the titillation and actually what matters to the American people.”
Someone may want to tell him that includes protecting vaccines.
