This open letter originally appeared on Paul Offit’s Substack, Beyond the Noise.
Dear Sen. Cassidy,
I appreciated your willingness to speak with me about my concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. prior to his confirmation hearing before your Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
Since his confirmation as secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has begun to dismantle the public health infrastructure, particularly regarding vaccines. Based on his actions, one can assume that the following will happen.
By the end of the year, Kennedy will announce that he has new evidence that vaccines cause autism. His hiring of David Geier, a known anti-vaccine activist, to help him with this effort is just one of several indicators of what is to come.
Then, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren predicted during the confirmation hearing, he will alter the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to make it easier to sue vaccine makers in open court. Or he will change the list of compensable injuries to include autism. If that happens, we will be right back to where we were in the early 1980s when personal-injury lawyers had free rein to sue vaccine makers. In response, President Reagan and Congress wisely passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986, which stopped the bleeding. Nonetheless, where 18 companies were making vaccines in 1980, by 1990, only four remained, the rest driven out by frivolous litigation. If Kennedy is successful in his quest to place unnecessary burdens on vaccine manufacture and testing, I have no doubt that vaccines will soon be either unaffordable or unavailable.
We are currently in the middle of a massive measles epidemic engulfing 30 states and jurisdictions. Under Kennedy’s leadership, immunization clinics have closed for lack of funding and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lost personnel and resources necessary to monitor this outbreak. More than 900 cases have been confirmed, but the real number may be as high as 5,000. In addition, three people have died of measles this year, two of whom were healthy little girls — the first child deaths from measles in the U.S. since 2003. These three measles deaths this year equals the total number of measles deaths in the United States in the last 25 years. During this epidemic, Kennedy has gone on national television and said that “measles vaccine kills people every year,” that “measles vaccine causes blindness and deafness,” and that “measles vaccine causes the same symptoms as measles,” all of which are incorrect. He insists that parents make “an informed personal choice” about vaccination and then proceeds to misinform them.
Measles isn’t the only problem. In 2024, the U.S. suffered more than 35,000 cases of pertussis and 12 deaths, numbers that were sixfold greater than the previous year. This year, more than 6,600 cases of pertussis have been recorded including two deaths in Louisiana, the first deaths from pertussis in your state in years. While Kennedy has held press conferences about autism and food dyes, he has never held a press conference clearly and unequivocally urging parents to vaccinate their children. That’s because he believes — as he has said many times — that vaccines are doing far more harm than good. By making vaccines less available, more expensive, and more feared, he is convinced that he is saving America’s children. He holds these beliefs with the strength of a religious conviction. No amount of data showing that he is wrong will change his mind.
Senator Cassidy, it is not too late to do something about this. I agree with Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association, that for the sake of America’s children, Kennedy must step down. You have influence here, and this is the time to use it. President Trump can still achieve the goals of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement without having an anti-vaccine activist and science denialist as its leader.
Happy to speak with you directly about this if you like. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Paul A. Offit, M.D.
Paul A. Offit is the director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
