Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downplayed and denied his past anti-vaccine statements while testifying before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, dismissing his long history of vaccine denials as he seeks to be confirmed as health secretary.
Kennedy addressed the issue in his opening statement, declaring himself neither anti-vaccine nor anti-industry. “I am pro-safety,” he told senators. “All of my kids are vaccinated, and I believe vaccines have a critical role in health care.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the committee, grilled the longtime anti-vaccine advocate on his “conflicting stories about vaccines.” The Oregon Democrat asked Kennedy about his comment in a July 2023 interview that “no vaccine is safe and effective” and his remarks in 2020 that he would “do anything” and “pay anything” to go back in time and not vaccinate his children.
Kennedy responded that he had been interrupted by the interviewer, Lex Fridman, in the 2023 interview before he could finish his thoughts.
“I said, ‘there are no vaccines that are safe and effective’ and I was going to continue, ‘for every person,’” he said. “Every medicine has people who are sensitive to them, including vaccines, right? So he interrupted me at that point.”
Kennedy also repeated his denial of any involvement in a measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019. At the time, there was growing skepticism of the measles vaccine after nurses accidentally mixed it with a muscle relaxant, causing the death of two infants. As vaccine rates dipped, Kennedy traveled to Samoa on the invitation of a local anti-vaccine activist and helped boost doubts about the vaccine. A measles outbreak ensued in the following months.
Kennedy told Wyden that his trip to Samoa “had nothing to do with vaccines” and that he was there to introduce a medical informatics system to the country.
“You cannot find a single Samoan who will say ‘I didn’t get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy,’” he said.
As NBC News reported, Kennedy, at the very least, “tried to exploit the initial vaccine accident to promote anti-vaccine misinformation that may have cost lives.”
CORRECTION (Jan. 29, 2025, 4:02 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the name of a podcaster who interviewed Kennedy in 2023. It is Lex Fridman, not Lex Friedman.
