Senator Marshall: We Are Fighting for Vaccine Transparency
Senator Marshall Questions HHS Secretary Kennedy on Vaccine Science and Warp Speed
Washington – On Thursday, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), questioned Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the need for transparency and sound science for vaccine recommendations, and the effectiveness of President Trump’s Warp Speed program.
Click HERE or on the image above to watch Senator Marshall’s full exchange.
Highlights from the hearing include:
On the importance of CDC transparency:
Senator Marshall: “Welcome, Mr. Secretary. One of your themes for the CDC is transparency. And I think when I hear you talk about transparency, I think part of that is sharing what you know, what the CDC knows, with parents so that they can make decisions.
“Behind me, yeah, I know it’s gonna be hard to see from there, I can barely read it. This is the current CDC recommendations for vaccines for children. On day number one, they get their first jab, the hepatitis vaccine. By the time they’re 18 months, they’ve had 18 jabs. By the time they get old enough to vote, they have 76 jabs.
“Now, when we talk, when I listen, what I hear you say is that, look, vaccines are drugs. We need a measured response, and… when do we use this? It’s interesting that the United States has put age 65 and older for the COVID-19 vaccine. The UK has chosen 75 and France 80. Obviously, scientists disagree exactly when that should or shouldn’t be. The Hepatitis B vaccine makes no sense to me. I’ve only delivered 5000 babies, but we do a hepatitis test on every mom. By the time she delivers that baby, I’ll know her pretty well. And if she doesn’t have any risk factors, if she’s not an IV drug abuser, if she’s in a stable, monogamous relationship, nobody at home has Hepatitis, I don’t see the benefit myself in that hepatitis vaccine.
“Everyone’s eligible for it. Everyone can get it, and my pediatricians always agree with me. And no, I’m not saying, if you don’t know the Hepatitis status of that patient, they shouldn’t get it. I’m not saying that if this person had no prenatal care, that puts them at risk for hepatitis. Can you just speak a little bit when you talk about transparency and trying to empower and make vaccines available? These should be treated just like a medication.”
Secretary Kennedy: “I mean, you know, I say I’m not anti-vaccine. Saying I’m anti-vaccine is like saying I’m anti-medicine. 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 certain populations. And the same is true with vaccines, and we don’t understand the risk profile, because vaccines are the only medical intervention, medical device or or pharmaceutical drug that are exempt from pre-licensing safety studies.
“And so there are two Hepatitis vaccines, and one of them had a safety study that lasted for four days on 143 kids, or a product that’s going to be given to 76 million kids. The risk profile prior to the introduction of the vaccine, the risk of a baby dying from Hepatitis B was one in 7 million. That means you need to give 7 million Hepatitis B vaccines to prevent one death if you’re going to give 7 million.”
On the effectiveness of President Trump’s Warp Speed program:
Senator Marshall: “And I guess before the press labels me wrong. I’m not anti-Vax either, either. I think MMR has been a great vaccine; the DPT has been a great vaccine. Polio has been a great vaccine. Smallpox… but it’s, it’s the major approach that we’re after, the transparency, you’re trying to empower parents here.
“What I feel the difference is sometimes my friends across the aisle feel like there’s a one-size-fits-all all, that they should be telling parents what to do. And what you and I are fighting for is that we want to empower parents to make these decisions.
“I want to talk about and mortality of Covid for just a second. It is so true that two things can be true, and I don’t understand… the rabbit hole some of my colleagues are going down. There’s a big difference. When I was out there practicing doing volunteer work, I was so confused on the numbers of people dying with Covid versus from Covid, and we still don’t have that message. And I think that’s what I hear you saying as well. How many people died from COVID versus with COVID is a different, different answer.
“The situation today is so different. When this monster virus was made in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and none of us had ever seen this virus, and we had no immunity to it. But today, every American’s had Covid a dozen times, probably, and we have built up immunity. I think that’s why both things are true.
“It was a miracle. Warp speed was a miracle. What President Trump and his team did it saved millions of lives, most likely, but it’s also true that it probably killed some people. Like most vaccines, there is a death rate associated. So both things are true. Anything else you want to clear up on the morbidity, mortality of Covid vaccines?”
Secretary Kennedy: “Well, I think you just cleared it up. The COVID vaccine was critical. President Trump’s leadership got it to us when our society was locked down and allowed us to open up. It was, as I said, perfectly matched to a virus that was new in the experience of humanity, and so it was a miracle.
“Right now we’re dealing with completely different circumstances, where the virus has mutated, where it’s much less dangerous, where there’s a lot of natural immunity. and herd immunity. And so the calculus is different, and it’s complicated. And you know, if you just want to turn everything into a sound bite… you can’t have a grown-up conversation.
“But you know, there were more reports to VAERS, which is the only surveillance system that we have, of injuries and deaths from that vaccine than all vaccines put together in history. We have to acknowledge that there was a cause, we acknowledge that there was a benefit, we can’t quantify either one because of the data chaos at the CDC. And that’s all I’m saying.
“And they think I’m being evasive, because I won’t make a kind of statement that’s almost religious in nature. Did it save a million lives? Well, there’s no data to support that… there’s no study, there’s modeling studies, there’s faulty data. I’m not going to sign on to something if I can’t make it a scientific certainty. It doesn’t mean that I’m, you know, anti-vax. It just means I’m pro-science.”
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Contact: Payton Fuller
