RFK makes its final plea for senators as a key confirmation voting hangs in the balance sheet

Washington (AP) – Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long record of questioning the security of childhood vaccinations as a flame point for him on Thursday during a confirmation hearing, where a key Republican quickly raised concerns about his views.

Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor who is chairman of the Health Committee, opened the hearing with tough questions to Kennedy. He asked him to reject a long-discred theory that vaccines cause autism.

Kennedy refused to make it flat.

“It’s no secret that I have some reservations about your past positions on vaccines and other problems,” Cassidy told the nominee.

Cassidy, from Louisiana, is considered a crucial vote for Kennedy, to be confirmed as Trump administration’s top health worker. He shared with Kennedy a personal story about an 18-year-old woman whose liver failed from a hepatitis infection.

“It was the worst day of my medical career because I thought $ 50 of vaccines could have prevented all this.”

Cassidy noted that Kennedy’s broad popularity and name recognition had given him a strong platform for his views on vaccines and said Kennedy’s advocacy had led people to waive that Covid-19 vaccine.

Then he carried into Kennedy’s view of ordinary vaccines, Lyme disease and approvals for future vaccines.

“If you are approved for this position, you will say unequivocally, you will reassure mothers unequivocally and without qualifying that measles and hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism?” Asked Cassidy.

Kennedy avoided answering directly but said “If the data is there I will definitely do it.”

Then followed Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont-independent, in a rare show of the profits of all over Aisle.

Again, Kennedy refused to give a final answer.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that infants get doses of hepatitis vaccination.

In his opening markings, Kennedy once again rejected the “anti-vaccine” mark and said instead he is “pro-security.” He repeated many of the same lines that he offered Senat’s Finance Committee on Wednesday.

Sanders, the senior minority party member of the committee, pressed Kennedy to admit that health care was a human right that his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncles, John F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy, had done. Kennedy again did not give a final answer.

Kennedy wants to lead the $ 1.7 trillion agency that oversees the health care system’s coverage – Medicare, Medicaid and Affordable Care Act Marketplace – for about half of the country, then approves vaccines against deadly diseases and conducts security inspections of food and hospitals.