By Anna Kaminski, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — In a rare moment of reprieve for U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he faced a grueling group of senators Thursday, U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas gave him the opportunity to explain his views on vaccines and leadership.
Democrats and Republicans alike expressed their distaste and concern for Kennedy’s decisions as leader of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during a roughly three-hour hearing before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. Kennedy defended staff turnover, the erosion of vaccine investment and funding stalls.
But Marshall spent his allotted five minutes leveling with the secretary.
“One of your themes for the CDC is transparency,” Marshall said.
Part of that transparency, he said, is sharing what Kennedy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention know about vaccines so parents can be better equipped to make decisions. An aide standing behind Marshall held a large sign containing a graphic depicting the current CDC recommendations for vaccinations for children.
“By the time they’re 18 months, they’ve had 18 jabs,” Marshall said. “By the time they get to be old enough to vote, they have 76 jabs.”
An aide moved the sign with the graphic to the side to reveal another sign, which read in bright red type, “76 JABS!”
Marshall, a former OB-GYN who said he’s delivered 5,000 babies, also said he doesn’t understand why newborns are given a hepatitis vaccine if a mother has no risk factors. The hepatitis vaccine is typically the first vaccine a newborn receives.
Hepatitis B is most commonly transmitted from mother to child at birth, and an estimated 1.1 million people died from hepatitis B infections in 2022, according to the World Health Organization.
Marshall said vaccines should be treated like medication and asked how Kennedy uses transparency to do just that.
Kennedy agreed with Marshall, confronting accusations that he is anti-vaccine.
“Saying I’m anti-vaccine is like saying I’m anti-medicine,” Kennedy said. “I’m pro-medicine, but I understand some medicines harm people. Some of them have risks. Some of them have benefits that outweigh those risks for some populations.”
Marshall said he and Kennedy are fighting to empower parents to make their own decisions surrounding vaccines.
“I guess before the press labels me wrong, I’m not anti-vaccine either,” Marshall said, expressing support for the MMR, DPT, polio and smallpox vaccines.
Marshall also gave Kennedy time to clear up any confusion about his stance on the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 vaccines.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, which Kennedy oversees, more than 1.2 million deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 as of Aug. 30. In an estimated 87% of those deaths, COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death, and it was listed as a contributing cause in the remaining deaths.
Earlier in the hearing, Kennedy said he didn’t know the total COVID-19 death toll in the U.S., refuting existing estimates of both the death toll and vaccine efficacy rates. He blamed “data chaos” at the CDC, which he also oversees.
Marshall agreed with Kennedy, articulating the difference between the number of people dying from COVID and the number of those who died with COVID.
“The calculus is different and it’s complicated,” Kennedy said, “and, you know, if you want to just turn everything into a sound bite, it makes it — you can’t have a grown-up conversation.”
