WASHINGTON – Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) warned senators on Wednesday not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next health and human services secretary, citing a dark story about Kennedy fueling an anti-vaccine misinformation campaign that resulted in the deaths of dozens of children in Samoa during a measles outbreak.
“This is an absolute life-or-death decision that the Senate … and frankly the incoming president is poised to make over our future,” Green, who is also a physician, said at a Capitol Hill press conference with other lawmakers who are medical professionals.
The governor traveled to Washington this week specifically to meet with Republican and Democratic senators to urge them to oppose Kennedy’s nomination, while Kennedy is on Capitol Hill making his case for why Democratic senators should support him.
Green hopes to remove partisanship from Kennedy’s nomination and focus senators from both major political parties on the importance of having a public health professional lead the nation’s top health agency.
He’s sharing his thoughts on a well-known “tragedy” that occurred in Samoa in 2019, when two children died as a result of human error by nurses administering measles, mumps, and rubella vaccinations. The mistake caused some people to lose faith in vaccines, and around the same time, Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccination activist, visited the Pacific island state and campaigned against vaccines on social media.
“A celebrity with no public health experience named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to Samoa, met with the prime minister, met with the secretary of health,” says Green. “He discouraged them from getting vaccinated.” And what happens when you discourage people from getting vaccinated? Many people refuse to get vaccinated because they are afraid.
As Kennedy promoted his anti-vaccination campaign, which Green describes as disinformation, the inoculation rate fell to 31%, and the measles virus spread. Samoan leaders asked Hawaii’s governor for assistance, so he traveled to their island with dozens of health care providers to help vaccinate as many people as possible. Green said there were about 5,000 confirmed cases of measles at the time, and the outbreak would kill more than 80 people, the majority of whom were children.
“This is no joke when you see pictures of a child with measles, when there are no hospitals around, when there are no ventilators to keep them alive,” Hawaii’s governor said. “We witnessed a child literally dying in front of us, just moments as we came into the village. … She was still warm when I put my hands on her face.”
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, pictured at right, has warned senators not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next health and human services secretary.
Ultimately, Green and other medical professionals helped vaccinate 37,000 people across the country. They prevented more deaths, but he said thousands of people suffered, and countless more were likely to develop encephalopathy, a condition that causes inflammation in the nervous system and can result in hearing loss, blindness, or intellectual disability.
At the time, Kennedy attributed the dozens of measles deaths to the vaccine itself. There was no evidence to support his claim.
“This would not have been necessary, if not for an interloper named Robert F. Kennedy,” Green told reporters Wednesday. “He stopped a week after we did the vaccination program.”
Green urged President-elect Donald Trump to reconsider Kennedy’s nomination and instead consider him for another position. “There may be a very good place for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” he was saying. “This isn’t partisan. This isn’t political. “This is medical.”
Green’s press conference was hosted by Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Washington), a pediatrician. She stated that she has met with many parents who are concerned about the safety of vaccines as a result of misinformation spread by individuals such as Kennedy.
“Sowing needless doubt in the minds of parents and the citizens of this country should disqualify Robert Kennedy Jr. from this job,” according to Schrier. “Make no mistake: Stoking vaccine hesitancy will lead to deaths.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s presidential transition team did not return a request for comment.
Green told HuffPost that he will meet with ten senators during his visit to Capitol Hill. He did not name names, but suggested that all are potentially flexible votes, and that one person he is particularly interested in speaking with is Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician.
“I have a great deal of respect for Sen. Cassidy,” Green said. “I greatly admire his stance on vaccinations. “This has been central to his life as a trained physician.”
He expressed his hope that the Louisiana Republican can “influence his colleagues” because he understands the medical importance of vaccines.
Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, met with Kennedy for an hour Wednesday. He told HuffPost that they had a “frank conversation,” but he did not say whether he would support his nomination.
“He and I did not talk about vaccines,” Cassidy said. “We had a long list of other things we were talking about.”
Cassidy told Fox News this weekend that Kennedy is “wrong” about vaccines.
