tinalexander.github.io / notes / 2025 / 03 /
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During the Trump transition, I have been serving as an unpaid advisor at the request of the immediate past HHS Acting Secretary, Dorothy Fink. This work will soon end. No one from the Administration has contacted me to discuss leading CDC. As I’ve stated from the outset, I intend to remain focused as CEO of Altesa BioSciences on the exciting progress being made developing new treatments for viral infections in vulnerable populations. ADM Brett Giroir MD
11:12:18 SEN WYDEN
What I want to know, yes or no, since you cherish Medicaid, will you agree to oppose cuts in the Medicaid program?
MEHMET OZ
I cherish Medicaid and I’ve worked within the Medicaid environment quite extensively, as I highlighted, practicing at Columbia University.
…
11:41:35 MEHMET OZ
This issue of preauthorization is a pox on the system. We spend 12% of the health care budget on administrative costs. Pre-authorization is misused in some settings.
There needs to be a mechanism to confirm that procedures are worthwhile, but I’ll offer some ideas on how this might work. And if confirmed, I’d love to push some of these ideas and share them with other members of the committee.
There are about 15,000 procedures that could have pre-authorization. They represent most of the things that are done. Not just operations, but medications that are given, etc.
Insurance companies today use preauthorization for about 5,500 of those procedures. But interestingly, not all insurance companies focus on the same things. And even within the idea– the procedure that’s being preauthorized, the criteria for accepting it are also all over the place.
So it’s very difficult to automate that. And so it tends to be misused, because it stalls the process, as your physician colleague in Florida pointed out, makes it more expensive. And we’re spending money, wasting money, trying to do a process that should be automated.
I would argue we could limit the number of preauthorized procedures to a thousand. Be very clear, if you’re going to have a knee replacement and you can bend your knee more than 120 degrees, you don’t get to get the knee replacement or whatever number you want to put in there.
And then if we know those numbers ahead of time, like a credit card approval doesn’t take you three months. You know immediately whether the transaction is approved or not. We will be able to do something similar so that pre-authorization could happen rapidly.
…
11:45:35 MEHMET OZ
So the MedPAC assessments have revealed what you just shared, that we’re actually apparently paying more for Medicare Advantage than we’re paying for regular Medicare. So it’s upside down.
And I think there are ways for us to look, for example, at the upcoding that’s going on, that’s happening systemically in many systems, in many programs to make sure that people who are being appropriately paid for taking care of sick patients, but not for patients who aren’t ill.
So for example, if someone’s showing up at your home to figure out if you have a small plaque in your carotid because they’re going to charge a lot more for the care of your plaque, which they’re not actually going to do anything for, that’s wrong. And I think we have numerous tools.
A part of this is just recognizing there’s a new sheriff in town. We actually have to go after places and areas where we’re not managing the American people’s money well. And if we can do that effectively, and both of us, I think, agree that there are opportunities to do that that are massive in scope, but they’re also important emotionally for the program.
You want people to have confidence in the program. The employees administering, the career employees administering Medicare, and the beneficiaries should all feel the system is working for them.
…
12:34:31 SEN SMITH
How do you think or do you think that AI should be used in prior authorization decisions?
MEHMET OZ
Senator Smith, I enjoyed visiting with you and thank you for sharing some of your ideas at that time. And this is a good place to start.
AI can be used for good or for evil. And it, to a large extent, depends on who’s using it for what purpose.
I think AI could play a vital role in accelerating preauthorization.
One reality in the healthcare system right now is the average insurance company has about 3,000 procedures that they use–they rely on preauthorization from. But they’re not the same 3,000 procedures.
So if you switch insurance companies, you may move from one that used to preauthorize a knee replacement, the new one doesn’t.
So I would argue that to use AI wisely, we would make a decision, which is we’re only going to preauthorize 1,000 procedures. Everything else just should get done because it’s only 1,000 where there’s a concern.
…
12:42:10 MEHMET OZ
The deeper promise that we should all be making to America is we’re going to make it easy for America to do the right thing when it comes to their health.
Some of these decisions are not difficult. Some of them need to be simplified. And some of them need to be reminded frequently.
And Senator Wyden and I had spoken about this a little bit, the idea of giving incentives to patients is an idea that I think is a worthy one, especially for Medicaid beneficiaries.
If people don’t feel Like it matters what they do. If they don’t think they have agency over their future, that they’re getting up in the morning doesn’t really make the world a better place, then yeah, they’re not going to take proactive steps to reduce their diabetes or another action that would dramatically reduce their life expectancy and their cost to the healthcare system.
So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to do this. And we should be innovative and explore ideas. And I think there’s an ecosystem we can build together to engender that kind of enthusiasm from people on the outside of medicine who want to make it better.
We have got to challenge the incumbents in the system to have new ideas bubble to the top so we can pick the winners based on competition.
…
12:50:06 SEN LUJAN
Yes or no, will you continue to defend Medicare drug pricing negotiation programs in court?
MEHMET OZ
It’s the law. I’m going to defend it and use it.
SEN LUJAN
Yes or no, will you commit to the process of negotiating prescription drug prices in Medicare?
MEHMET OZ
I’m going to look, as the president has instructed me to already, for every single way that we can reduce drug prices.
And there are lots of options available. I feel compelled to pursue every one of them.
SEN LUJAN
I’ll ask you one more time because I think I heard it, but I’ll give you another chance.
Yes or no, will you commit to the process of negotiating prescription drug prices in Medicare?
MEHMET OZ
Senator, it’s one of many approaches I want to use.
…
12:53:27 MEHMET OZ
The answer to is I am in favor of work requirements, and I don’t believe we should allow–
SEN WARNOCK
Do you think a family should have to fill out paperwork every month? Just to get health care?
MEHMET OZ
I don’t think you need to use paperwork to prove a work requirement. And I don’t think that should be used as an obstacle, a disingenuous effort to block people from getting on Medicaid.
However, I believe we would both probably agree that there’s value in work and it doesn’t have to be going to a job. It could be getting education. It should be showing that you want to contribute to society.
Frankly, you could volunteer at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where I did a show with you once, that would, for me, fulfill the requirement.
…
13:23:39 SEN WYDEN
In terms of what you’re going to be dealing with if confirmed, what do you think the biggest abuses are right now in the private insurance sector?
MEHMET OZ
Medicare Advantage sales.
SEN WYDEN
Such as? I mean, give me an example of–
MEHMET OZ
There’s brokers that get involved in churning policies. So they get you to switch from policy to policy.
We should potentially consider whether you need to reelect Medicare Advantage every year and potentially offer multi-year programs for seniors, because that would save some of the money that the brokers are taking out of the middle.
Some brokers do a great job, some don’t. We probably have too many. I think there are ways for us to ensure that that marketing process works better for the folks involved.
But it’s also what the Medicare Advantage plans also do with the monies that they use to incentivize the American people, the 32, 33 million people on Medicare Advantage to come into their programs.
And we should examine whether some of that money should be reimbursed to the American people to ensure that Medicare Advantage does not cost more than fee-for-service Medicare.
Twelve hours before my scheduled confirmation hearing in The Senate, I received a phone call from an assistant at the White House informing me that my nomination to be Director of CDC was being withdrawn because there were not enough votes to get me confirmed. I then spoke to HHS Secretary Bobbie Kennedy who was very upset. He was told the same thing and that he had been looking forward to working with me at CDC. He said I was the perfect person for the job.
Bobbie told me that earlier that morning he had breakfast with Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine who said she now had reservations about my nomination and was considering voting no. I had a very pleasant meeting with her 2 weeks prior where she expressed no reservation, but at my meeting with her staff on March 11 they were suddenly very hostile-a bad sign. They repeatedly accusing me of being “antivax”, even though I reminded them that I actually give hundreds of vaccines every year in my medical practice. More than Twenty years ago, while in congress I raised some concerns about childhood vaccine safety, and for some reason Collins staff suddenly couldn’t get over that no matter what I said back.
There are 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the committee so losing one, was a problem if all the Democrats vote no which they have been doing. I can assume that the White House staff had my nomination withdrawn also because the Republican Chairman Dr. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was also voting no. Ironically, he is also an internist like me and I have known him for years and I thought we were friends. But he too was also throwing around the claim that I was “antivax” or that I believed that vaccines cause autism which I have never said. He actually once asked that my nomination be withdrawn. So, he was a big problem and losing Collins too was clearly too much for the White House. The president is a busy man doing good work for our nation and the last thing he needs is a controversy about CDC.
The concern of many people is that big Pharma was behind this which is probably true. They are hands-down, the most powerful lobby organization in Washington DC giving millions of dollars to politicians on both sides of the aisle. They also purchased millions of dollars of advertising in newspapers, magazines, and on television. For any news or organization to take on big Pharma could be suicide. Many media actually carry water for Pharma. They also give generously to medical societies and colleges and universities. I have learned the hard way don’t mess with Pharma.
I have been told that Big Pharma had desperately tried to get rid of Bobby Kennedy but were unable due to the strong support of President Trump. Many people feel big Pharma actually feared me more than they feared Bobby because of my credibility and my knowledge of science and medicine. So, if they had to live with Bobby for 4 years they were definitely not going to have both him and me and put serious pressure on Collins and Cassidy.
My big sin was that as a congressman 25 years ago I had the temerity to take on the CDC and big Pharma on two critical childhood vaccine safety issues. Hundreds of parents had been coming to me from all over the country, insisting that their child has been seriously damaged by the inoculations. Some claimed it caused autism. The parents made two different assertions. One was the fact that FDA, CDC, and Pharma had allowed a tremendous amount of a neurotoxic preservative called thimerosal into the infant schedule and that the thimerosal was the cause of the problem.
Under pressure from me and many other members of the House, both Democrat and Republican, the CDC and Pharma removed the neurotoxic thimerosal, but it took them years to do it. One of the things that seemed to unite us in The House who engaged on this was that none of us took money from Pharma. Bernie Sanders actually joined us.
CDC ended up publishing a research study claiming the mercury had done no harm, but there were credible accusations that CDC had incorrectly manipulated the data to exonerate themselves. If confirmed I was planning on going back into the CDC database and quietly investigate this claim. Ironically, I was hoping to find no evidence of corruption of the science at CDC. Maybe in hearing it from me members of the public might be reassured and it might help improve the currently somewhat tarnished image of CDC and Pharma.
But I unfortunately also had the temerity to take on CDC and Pharma regarding another childhood vaccine safety issue, the safety of the measles vaccine called MMR. More than 25 years ago there were a series of articles published by a British pediatric gastroenterologist named of Andrew Wakefield. He had seen many parents who claimed that after the MMR their child had not only deteriorated developmentally but had also become fussy eaters and developed diarrhea. He did colonoscopies on the children and discovered that they had a new form of inflammatory bowel disease. His research was later duplicated and to this day he has been credited for defining this form of childhood inflammatory bowel disease.
Wakefield published 15 papers in all. Only one was withdrawn. The one that created the big controversy was published in a journal called Lancet and one of the co-authors on the paper was a highly respected Irish virologist by the name of O’Leary. I actually knew of O’Leary. I used to take care of AIDS patients prior to going to congress and I knew of O’Leary’s reputation as a solid scientist. One of the complications the AIDS patients were developing was a form of cancer called Kaposi Sarcoma and O’Leary had shown that the cancer occurred in the AIDS patients when there was co-infection with a second virus called Herpes Simplex Type 8.
Wakefield decided to give some of the colon biopsy specimens to O’Leary who was able to show using a technique called PCR that the inflammatory bowel disease biopsies in these children contained the vaccine strain measles viruses. The live virus in the vaccine was supposed to be weekend and not cause illness. This suggested that the children were not able to handle the viral particles and that it was causing an infection in their bowels which also might have been affecting their central nervous system and causing the autistic features.
When this article was published thousands of British parents started refusing the MMR and there were measles outbreaks. British health officials had their hands full. They decided to get the journal Lancet to withdraw the article and they actually got O’Leary to withdraw his research findings. I was following all of this closely and had actually met with O’Leary and I had looked at his biopsy micrographs and his PCR findings. It certainly looked to me like the vaccine particles were causing the problem in these children, and I was surprised that O’Leary withdrew his assertions.
I then called O’Leary on the phone and asked him why he was doing this. There was a very long pregnant pause. He then said that it had taken him many years to get to the place where he was in the scientific community, and after another pause, he said he had four small children at home. I had small children at home myself at the time and I understood what he was saying. If he didn’t do it, he was going to be fired. He was going to be ruined.
British officials were not satisfied with just getting the journal to withdraw the article and getting Dr. O’Leary to withdraw his claims. They then decided to begin proceedings to take away Dr. Wakefield’s medical license and one of his lead co-authors. Wakefield by this time had moved to the United States and to defend himself in court would have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars so he let them take his license away. But his lead co-author Dr. Simon Murch was still practicing medicine in England and decided to defend himself in court, and the government lost and they were not able to take his license away. If Wakefield had the money to defend himself, he would never have lost his license. The court documents clearly show that Wakefield and his co-authors had not done anything unethical or inappropriate and their work was possibly valid.
But that was all big Pharma needed. They could go around, saying it and feeding it to the media that the research had been withdrawn and Wakefield lost his license. But I looked at the micrographs and it sure looked to me like there was vaccine strain measles particles infecting the bowels of these kids.
The CDC was charged with the responsibility of repeating to Wakefield research and showing that the measles vaccine was safe, but they never did it the right way. They decided to de epidemiologic studies instead of a clinical study. Again, as in the mercury study there were claims made that indicators that there was a problem with MMR were there. CDC was accused again of changing the protocol and data analysis until the association went away.
Ironically, I talked with Wakefield after all of this was over. He agreed with me that we have to vaccinate our kids for measles. He thought the solution was to give the vaccine at a slightly older age, like they do in many European countries. Or we might be able to do research and figure out why some kids have a bad reaction to the MMR. Clearly, big Pharma didn’t want me in the CDC investigating any of this.
There are a lot of additional ironies in all of this. I believe the CDC is mostly made up of really good people who really care about public health for our nation, though its credibility has been seriously tarnished because of the failures in the way the COVID-19 crisis was managed. 40% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans, don’t trust the CDC. Many don’t trust Pharma as well. I really wanted to try to make the CDC a better more respected agency and killing my nomination may have the opposite effect. Distrust may worsen.
I also have a lot of respect for the pharmaceutical industry. I practice internal medicine and I use medication’s in caring for my patients that were invented by American pharmaceutical companies. I can tell you firsthand they are very effective and help a lot of people. The new ones are outrageously expensive, but once they go off patent, they can become very affordable and very life-saving for many people with chronic and acute illnesses.
But I unfortunately, am viewed very negatively by the industry that I use on a daily basis to help my patients. Bobby Kennedy is a good man who really is passionate about improving the health of the American people. President Trump did a good thing in making him secretary of HHS. Hopefully they can find someone for CDC who can survive the confirmation process and get past pharma and find some answers.
On background from a WH official:
Yesterday’s roundtable, moderated by Sec. Kennedy, was broken into four main segments: nutrition, physical activity, over-medicalization and standards of care, and environmental impacts. For each segment, an agency official opened it up before taking questions from MAHA moms. MAHA Commission and agency officials directly sought input from MAHA moms (and everyday moms) for what they would like to see addressed in the “Making our Children Healthy Again Assessment” and the subsequent strategy in order to help make it easier for mothers and fathers to raise healthy kids and families.
Roundtable Participants Included:
- Secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
- DPC Director, Vince Haley
- Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins
- Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt
- WH Counselor, Alina Habba
- WH Chief Policy Strategist, May Davis Mailman
- DPC Deputy Assistant to the President, Dr. Heidi Overton
- WH Director of Media Affairs and MAHA MOM, Sonny Nelson
- HHS/OASH, DAS for Women’s Health and Endocrinologist, Dr. Dorothy Fink
- FDA Acting Commissioner, Dr. Sarah Brenner
- HHS USPHS, Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos
- Nutrionist and Holistic Health Coach, Stacy Krys
- Founder of The Conservateur and Former White House Aid, Jayme Franklin
- Author and Founder of Food Babe, MAHA Influencer, Vani Hari
- School Lunchroom Expert and Physician Assistant, Stephanie Chawla, PA-C
- Former Cheerleader, Holistic Health Coach, Barbie Markey
- Several MAHA Moms
Sub-Topics Covered:
- Nutrition and Food Quality and Safety
- Food production and baby formula
- Nutrition standards
- School lunches
- Locality of food system
- Physical Activity and Chronic Stress
- Sedentary behavior and frequency of physical activity
- Chronic stress and family environment
- Impact of technology
- Over-medicalization and Standards of Care
- Standards of care and medical intervention patterns
- Vaccine schedule and immunity
- Corporate influence and medical education
- Environmental Impacts
- Environmental toxins
- Electromagnetic radiation
- Water quality
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:00:43]
Some years we have hundreds of measles outbreaks. We have measles outbreaks every year. And you know, part of that is that there are people who don’t vaccinate, but also the vaccine itself wanes. The vaccine wanes about 4.5% per year. So that means older people are essentially unvaccinated.
They aren’t– their immune system is not protected. And one of the problems is that tends to shift measles infections to older groups and also to very young children. So, if you get – it used to be when I were kids, everybody got measles and measles gave you protective, lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that.
The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but many people it wanes. And one of the problems is it does not appear to provide maternal immunity. It used to be a very young kid, you don’t want a very– a one year old kid getting measles. That’s very dangerous. They were protected by breast milk and by maternal immunity.
And women who get vaccinated do not provide that level of maternal immunity that the natural measles infection did. So you’re now seeing measles hit very, very young kids and hitting older people within whom the vaccine has waned. And that is something that we need to worry about. And that we’re looking at HHS.
…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:02:37]
Death is very, you know, from measles historically, it was between one and 1 in 1,200 and 1 in 10,000. And so it does not have a high infection fatality rate. And the people who tended to die were people who had comorbidities and they were malnourished, which is less a problem because we, the vaccine came around in 1963 and the WICS program, which fed all of these hungry kids in our country came in in 64.
And so– but it’s something that we’re worried about. It’s something that we’re keeping an eye on. I’ve met, I’ve spoken with Governor Abbott, I’ve spoken with health officials all over Texas. I’ve spoken with the family of the one girl who died and it’s a heartbreaking story. And– and I’ve spoken with health officials all over.
…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.[00:03:54]
I’m a freedom of choice person. We should have transparency. We should have an informed choice. And– but if people don’t want it, they shouldn’t be– the government shouldn’t force them to do it.
There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year, it causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes. Encephalitis, and blindness, etc. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves.
And what we need to do is give them the best information, encourage them to vaccinate, the vaccine does stop the spread of the disease.
…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:05:23]
First of all, avian flu will never be eradicated. It is endemic in wild populations of birds and particularly mallards. And that’s what infects the domestic flocks.
And so you’ll never get rid of it and it doesn’t appear to hurt wild birds. They have some kind of immunity.
And the strategy– the White House, all of my agencies have advised against vaccination of birds. Because if you vaccinate with a leaky vaccine, in other words, a vaccine that does not provide sterilizing immunity, that does not absolutely protect against the disease, you turn those flocks into mutation factories.
They’re generating, they’re teaching the organism how to mutate and it’s much– it destabilizes it. And it’s much more likely to jump to animals if you do that.
So all my agency heads from NIH, CDC and FDA had all said, we should not be vaccinating, it’s dangerous for human beings to vaccinate the birds.
The question is, should you cull those blocks? Most of our scientists are against the culling operation. They think that we should be testing therapeutics on those flocks. They should isolate them. You should let the disease go through them and identify the birds that survive, which are the birds that probably have a genetic capacity, genetic inclination for immunity. And those should be the birds that we breed, like the wild population.
Right now, the White House strategy is to repopulate those farms that have been depopulated. We’ve killed 166 million chickens. That’s why we have an egg crisis.
And, the disease is not passed through food. So you cannot get it, as far as we know, you cannot get it from an egg or or milk or meat from an infected animal.
The White House strategy now, and Brooke Rollins who runs USDA and I am all on board with this. Now we should armor the domestic populations to insulate them from wild infiltration.
This is how these birds are getting infected, a wild mallard, most of them are in open air poultry farms. A mallard will fly in to eat some of the corn and that infected mallard will infect the flock.
And so I think that that is the best strategy and also to intensively test therapeutic drugs on those flocks, so that, for example, you tell you– you put a therapy in with half the population. And if that half that is treated survives, now you have a drug that potentially is useful in human beings to treat avian flu.
That’s what we should be doing.
…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:08:25]
I saw him yesterday and I think he’s lost 30 pounds.
Sean Hannity [00:08:28]
Okay. He looks great. And he told me he’s not using, for example, if he has a burger now, he usually doesn’t have it with a bun.
He’s made–
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:08:38]
I didn’t know that he was actually changing his diet.
Sean Hannity [00:08:40]
Oh, you didn’t know that part?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:08:42]
No.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:01:29]
Processed foods and seed oil is one of the components of processed foods. And that is, you know, all the science indicates that ultra processed foods are what are behind the principal culprit in this extraordinary explosion, the epidemic we have, of chronic disease.
When my uncle was president, 3% of Americans had chronic disease. Today, 60% do. We have 66% of adults are diabetic or prediabetic, 38% of teens.
When you and I were kids, Sean, the average pediatrician would see one case of juvenile diabetes in his lifetime, over a 40 or 50 year career. Today, one out of every three kids who walks through his office door is diabetic or pre diabetic.
…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:02:34]
We are poisoning ourselves. And it’s coming from principally these ultra processed foods and what we’re trying to do, and as President Trump wants us to have radical transparency and to incentivize companies like this one to switch to traditional ingredients like beef tallow.
…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:04:25]
Popeyes, Outback, Sweet Green, Buffalo Wild, they’ve all made the switch or they’re in the transition of making the switch.
We want to do everything that we can to incentivize these companies to be transparent, to switch over from ultra processed food, and to be part of this movement, to make America healthy again.
…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:07:15]
There are studies coming out of Stanford and Harvard that show a lot of mental illness, including anxiety and depression, are related to food. And that changing your diet, food is medicine, by changing your diet, you can lose some of those diagnoses.
And this Sean is a uniquely American problem. This is not happening, like it is here, elsewhere in the world.
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- All positions within the Office of Enterprise Transformation (OET), and all positions in all Offices reporting to the OC are included.
Ineligible Positions: Inspectors and investigators in the Office of Inspections and Investigations (Oll) including positions within the Office of Criminal Investigations (OCI); reviewers in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), the Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), and reviewers in OC offices; physical security positions; cybersecurity positions; and all PHS Commissioned Corps Officers.
As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening. The American people expect high quality research and transparency and that is what CDC is delivering.
10:17:42 SEN MURRAY
I want to know what you are reevaluating it on. What are you looking at to make a decision, whether to reconvene it?
MAKARY
In conjunction with the center director of the biologics center, I would reevaluate which topics deserve a convening of the advisory committee members on VRBPAC, and which may not require the convening.
Obviously, during–
SEN MURRAY
Well, what would you base the decision on?
MAKARY
Well, you can ask the Biden administration that chose not to convene the committee meeting for the COVID booster.
…
11:06:13 MAKARY
I do think it makes sense to review the totality of data and ongoing data.
I know personally of OB doctors who prefer to insist, even though they have the option to prescribe otherwise, but they choose to insist that mifepristone be taken when necessary, in their office, as they observe the person taking it.
And I think their concern there is that if this drug is in the wrong hands, it could be used for coercion.
…
11:17:56 MAKARY
So I think seed oils are a good example of where we could benefit from a consolidation of the scientific research. And I don’t think it’s any one ingredient in the food supply that’s making our nation’s children sick.
With a 30% rate of insulin resistance and diabetes in American teenagers today, that is a massive signal in the data. And so I think we have to look at the totality of every single thing in school lunch programs, in the diet of our nation’s children, when we’re using tax dollars to make purchases of foods that we know make our nation’s children sick, we have to reexamine how we’re spending those tax dollars.
So one thing I would like to work on is a school lunch program for some school districts on a pilot basis to transition to healthier foods. A lot of school districts want to, but they don’t know how, and they may not have the funds. So I’ve been discussing this with Jay Bhattacharya and others in the administration.
And I hope that’s something we can do.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:04:04]
I’ve been in touch with the governor, with Governor Abbott, who I talked to last week, as you know.
A little girl died. She was a member of the Mennonite community. She was unvaccinated and she’s the first measles death since 2015 in our country, the second measles death since 2005.
So the disease is a self-limiting childhood disease of the four childhood diseases of mumps, chickenpox, German measles, also known as rubella. It was always the most serious, it can cause death. It can cause encephalopathy and pneumonia and blindness.
In rare cases, the death rate for measles in our country, in 1963, prior to the introduction of the vaccines was about 1 in 1,200 to 1 in 10,000. So it’s a very, very low infection fatality rate. The overall population death rate of measles was about one in half a million.
But it can result in very serious consequences in some cases, and we are doing everything we can that that to make sure that that doesn’t happen again, that people have access to good medicines, including those who want them, to vaccines, which do prevent infection.
I’ve been in touch with the department of health there, with leaders of the Mennonite community. I have spoken to the parents of the child who died. It was very, very emotional and long conversation with them.
And I think I have some understanding of what’s happening in the Mennonite community and why they have this resistance.
But I’ve also spoken to frontline doctors, which is something that I think the CDC has not been good at doing in the past, to see what’s working.
There are two wonderful doctors there. A doctor called Richard Bartlett and another called Ed Benjamin.
Ed Benjamin is a family physician from Lubbock. Richard Barlett is an emergency room physician from Midland and Amarillo.
And they have treated most of the patients, actually, over 108 patients in the last 48 hours. And they’re getting very, very good results they report from budesonide, which is a steroid, it’s a 30 year old steroid and they clarithromycin and also cod liver oil, which has high concentrations of vitamin A and vitamin D. And they’re seeing what they describe as almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery from that.
We don’t make it at HHS because we haven’t done a clinical trial on those and we should have, but we haven’t, and we’re going to.
We need to look at those therapies and other therapies. We need to really do a good job of talking to the frontline doctors and see what is working on the ground, because those therapeutics have really been ignored by the agency for a long, long time.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:07:54]
What Dr. Bartlett and Dr. Benjamin have said, what other doctors say, is that the best, the safest application of vitamin A is through cod liver oil, because, you’re getting it through food and you’re not– and the toxicity issue is no longer an issue.
You can test people at the hospital for vitamin A, there are lots of good studies out there, and there’s not the kind of studies that we should be doing that we’re doing now, but there’s lots of good studies out there that show that even as a prophylaxis, it’s effective in early treatment, mild cases.
You could ideally test people for vitamin A deficiencies, when they first get sick, but this rarely happens and it’s more expensive. And we recommend to local physicians that they consider vitamin A in their protocols, but also, you know, we’re going to try to provide as best we can, the experiences of frontline doctors, so that physicians really have a battery and arsenal of therapies to use when children actually do get sick.
You pointed out there is malnutrition in west Texas, in Gaines county, and in the Mennonite community. The doctors that I’m talking to on the ground, the leaders, the community are reporting that the people who are getting sick are people who are, and the little girl who died, were malnutrition may have been an issue in her death.
So there’s a lot of poverty in that area, the food is kind of a food desert. The best thing that Americans can do is to keep themselves healthy.
It is very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person. So if you’re healthy, well nourished, in fact, the– measles at one point was killing about 10,000 people a year in our country at the time, but those deaths were eliminated through nutrition and sanitation.
Measles still is a very, very lethal disease in foreign countries and developed countries where there’s malnutrition, that’s mainly– and there were in 1963 prior to the introduction of the vaccine, there was about 400 people who died from measles. Almost all of them were malnourished children.
And so nutrition is absolutely critical and we need to eat good foods. We need to eat whole foods. We need to get plenty of exercise. And we see a correlation between people who get hurt by measles and people who are– who don’t have good nutrition or who don’t have good exercise regimen.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:11:35]
Measles vaccines protects the community. And there are people who cannot be, who should not be vaccinated in the community because they have autoimmune disease or other immune problems.
And if you do get vaccinated, you’re protecting those people from a possible spread.
The vaccine is contraindicated for people who are already sick, but it appears to work for people who are exposed or are likely to be exposed. So in highly unvaccinated communities like Mennonites, it’s something that we recommend.
But we also understand, there’s a lot of mistrust of the vaccines in that community. One of the consistent themes was that the Mennonites have told me and their leaders is there’s a number of vaccine injured kids, about a dozen, in that community.
And when we said, when I said, I’m going to send CDC and we have a CDC team arriving today, and I said that to the Mennonites, they said, well, we want them to also look into our vaccine injured kids and look them in the eye.
So they have religious reasons. They have other reasons with CDC in the past, has not done a good job at quantifying the risk of vaccines. We are going to do that now, so that people can make a real informed choice about what’s best for them, for their families and their communities.
At this point, we are recommending that people in those communities get vaccines. We understand a lot of them will not. And we’re going to try to make sure that they’re taken care of through the best therapeutic interventions that we can provide them or recommend for them.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:14:02]
We’re making sure that anybody who wants a vaccine can get that vaccine. And– but we also recognize there is religious reasons, and there is other barriers of mistrust for our government.
And we’re trying to remedy that. My approach to this issue is just going to be absolute radical transparency.
We’re going to get the information. You know, we have a vaccine surveillance system in this country that just doesn’t work. The CDC system, the CDC was ordered in 1986– when we gave– when Congress gave immunity from liability to vaccine companies, it ordered CDC to create a surveillance system that really captures all vaccine injuries.
Under CDC’s own studies, show that the current system that we have, the VAERS system, the vaccine adverse event reporting system, captures fewer than 1% of vaccine injury. That is absolutely inexcusable.
People need to know. We don’t know what the risk profile is for these products. Americans have the right to know, to be able to make an informed choice. You need to know the cost and the benefits, and we’ve never quantified the cost.
And that’s why there’s so much mistrust and we need to restore government trust. And we’re gonna do that by telling the truth. And by doing rigorous science, understand both safety and efficacy issues.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:17:19]
And we’ve in fact, said at the USDA, that they should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds and preserve the birds that are immune to it.
The vaccines do not– there’s no indication that those vaccines actually provide sterilizing immunity and all three of my health agencies, NIH, CDC, and FDA, the acting heads of those agencies have all recommended against the use of the bird flu vaccine for that particular genotype, because the vaccine could actually promote antigenic shift, which means you’re turning those birds into mutant factories.
And that could actually accelerate the jump to human beings. There’s never in history that we know of, bird flu’s been around for a hundred years. There’s never been human to human transmission.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:19:55]
We’re really taking direction from the state health departments and from Governor Abbott.
Right now, we have– we’re delivering vitamin A, we are providing assistance if people need ambulance rides.
You know, there’s a very– Gaines County where most the cases occurred is a very remote county. The nearest urgent care is in Seminole, Texas. And then, but the nearest real hospital is in Lubbock, which could be 70 or 80 miles from these cases.
Some of the Mennonites have said to me that they don’t feel comfortable going to Lubbock. They feel that there is religious prejudice that there’s– that has been a theme in their expression.
So what we’re trying to do is really to restore faith in government and to make sure that we are there to help them with their needs and not particularly to dictate what they ought to be doing.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:22:39]
We have this chronic disease epidemic.
And, you know, as I said, we’ve had two measles death in 20 years in this country, we have a hundred thousand autism diagnosises every year.
So, we need to keep our eye on the ball. Chronic disease is our enemy.
We had during COVID the highest death rate on the planet. We had 16% of the COVID deaths in our country, and we only have 4.2% of the global population. Why is that?
CDC says that it’s because we have the highest chronic disease burden in the world.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:23:32]
We need to understand the relationship between good health and chronic disease.
If you are healthy, it’s almost impossible for you to be killed by an infectious disease, in modern times, because we have nutrition, because we have access to medicines.
It’s very, very difficult for an infectious disease to kill a healthy human being. So we need to get America healthy again, and that will take care of 99 percent.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:25:03]
I went to measles parties when I was a kid, I went to chicken pox parties, and I had natural immunity and there’s a lot of studies out there that show that if you actually do get the wild infection, you’re protected later, it boosts your immune system later in life against cancers, atopic disease, cardiac disease, etc.
It’s not well studied. It ought to be well studied because we ought to understand those relationships. But I would never advise somebody to get sick, but I– what we need is good science on all of these things so that people can make rational choices.
And it is well known and it was well known during COVID and very well documented and natural immunity in every viral infection that we know that natural immunity is broader spectrum and more durable. In other words, it’s much more robust and lasts much longer than vaccine-induced immunity, including with measles.
So, we need to understand all of those things, and we need to get people so that they’re making rational choices that protect themselves, that protect their communities and protect particularly people who have immune problems in their communities.
So vaccination is part of that arsenal, but we’re not going to focus in on the only thing. We’re going to look at these more holistically.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:26:48]
This is one of those things that we worry about in the culling operations is that the states are using all different kinds of PCR cycles.
And some of those may be finding viruses where the virus is dead and harmless and then killing all the birds. And that doesn’t make sense.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:28:32]
I read that story. I don’t know anything about it. We– I never spoke to that person.
All of the agencies are consulted and all of them, what we’re doing is consensual, right? Everything that we’ve done is consensual in all the agencies.
I think that individual had personnel problems and was about to be terminated. And, so they may have made up a story to explain their termination and then, you know, quit before before he got that news.
So, but I don’t know anything about him, as I said, I’ve never met him.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:29:30]
The explanation that I read in Politico was not true. There was no dispute between me and this individual.
And as far as I know, we haven’t heard anything from our agencies, from my subagencies, from CDC and NIH and FDA, except, all of the steps that we’re taking are consensual. All of them are the product of long debates and conversations.
We come to a consensus and we do what’s right for the American people.
10:22:45 BHATTACHARYA
Senator, it’s a tragedy that a child would die from a vaccine preventable disease. I fully support children being vaccinated for diseases, like measles, that can be prevented with the vaccination efforts.
As far as research on autism and vaccines, I don’t generally believe that there is a link. And based on my reading of the literature.
But what I have seen is that there’s tremendous distrust in medicine and science coming out of the pandemic. And we do have, as you know, senator, a sharp rise in autism rates in this country. And I don’t know, and I don’t think any scientist really knows, the cause of it.
So I would support an agenda of– a broad agenda, a broad scientific agenda based on data to get an answer to that.
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10:26:53 BHATTACHARYA
I think the most important childhood health problems have to do with childhood diabetes, childhood obesity. That’s where the vast, vast majority of the effort should go.
Prevention of childhood infectious diseases also, I think, is important. I mean, all of those are– I think you and agree would be the main priorities.
That’s the priorities I’ll have if I’m NIH director.
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10:27:52 BHATTACHARYA
I don’t have a full answer to that question, but I agree with your concern. And the fact that we do pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.
If I’m NIH director, if I’m confirmed as NIH director, I think there’s a very specific thing that we haven’t done but we should do.
The NIH should fund research on off-patent, off-label use of off-patent drugs, inexpensive drugs.
I’ll give you an example from the pandemic, senator. There was a tremendous– tremendous achievement, I think. There was a study done in the United Kingdom of a cheap steroid called dexamethasone very early in the pandemic.
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10:35:44 BHATTACHARYA
Senator, I think that the resources the NIH– the taxpayers give to the NIH are precious. And if confirmed, I absolutely commit to changing the grant committee makeup so that they focus on the most important questions that address– that impact American health.
I mean, there needs to be a mix of basic science work, and I’m not a basic scientist myself, but I can understand how some somewhat abstract basic science work have fund advances. But at the same time, the research should really be focused on making America healthy.
That’s the mission of the NIH.
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11:06:43 BHATTACHARYA
Senator, I should say I have a background as an economist as well as being a doctor. And to me, that background, what it leads me to do is understand that every dollar wasted on a frivolous study is a dollar not spent– every dollar wasted on administrative costs that are not needed, is a dollar not spent on research.
The team I’m going to put together is going to be hyper-focused to make sure that the portfolio of grants that the NIH funds is devoted to the chronic disease problems of this country.
It’s going to be devoted to making sure we have not just incremental progress, but research projects that have the capacity to make huge advances in treatment for cancer, for diabetes, for obesity.
That’s how I’m going to decide what the team is. And the NIH, actually, I’m blessed in some ways because it already has so many excellent scientists there to advise me on the areas I don’t know about.
And I want to tap that resource. I want to make sure I talk to every single person who’s already a leader at the NIH to understand where those opportunities are.
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11:08:35 BHATTACHARYA
Senator, first of all, I want to make sure that– and I want to work with the Congress to make sure that there’s appropriate regulation of any risky research.
The NIH should have– I don’t think should be doing any research that has the potential to cause a pandemic.
And I want to work with Congress to make sure that happens.
02:32:03 PM
SIEGEL: To provide many more doses of the shot in Texas, though he continues to believe at the same time in personal choice, he says, most of the people impacted are part of the Mennonite community, including an unvaccinated little girl who tragically died.
KENNEDY:
In highly unvaccinated communities like the Mennonites, it’s something that we recommend.
But we also understand, you know, there’s a lot of mistrust of the vaccines in that community (TRANSITION) and there are people who cannot be, who should not be vaccinated in the community because they have autoimmune disease or other immune problems.
And if you do get vaccinated, you’re protecting those people from a possible spread.
SIEGEL:
He says, a startling 108 patients were treated in Texas in the last 48 hours, and that therapies, such as the use of cod liver oil which contains vitamin A and D are working.
He says, the sudden resignation of HHS employee Thomas Corry was not over a clash about the outbreak as reported by Politico.
KENNEDY:
I think that individual had personnel problems and was about to be terminated, and so they may have made up a story to explain their termination, and then, you know, quit before he got that news.
So– but I don’t know anything about him. As I said, I’ve never met him.
SIEGEL:
Secretary Kennedy, inspired by his father’s commitment to public health for all Americans, as he related to me, plans to focus on improving the Indian Health Service.
KENNEDY:
Indian Health Service has been the red-headed stepchild of the of HHS. It’s chronically underfunded. It usually receives about 30% of what it really needs.
SIEGEL:
Kennedy is also calling for transparency, more studies on vaccines and accurate reporting of vaccine injury.
“The measles outbreak is a top priority for Secretary Kennedy as he noted in this op-ed Sunday,” said Senior Counselor and Principal Deputy Chief of Staff Stefanie Spear. “The CDC is actively supporting Texas state health officials and will be on the ground Tuesday working with the frontline health care providers.
“As Kennedy said in his op-ed, ‘The measles outbreak in Texas is a call to action for all of us to reaffirm our commitment to public health. By working together – parents, healthcare providers, community leaders, and government officials, we can prevent future outbreaks and protect the health of our nation. Under my leadership, HHS is and will always be committed to radical transparency to regain the public’s trust in its health agencies.’”