Republican Senator Bill Cassidy has said childhood vaccines are safe and warned that President Donald Trump’s comments about immunisation risk confusing parents and causing more people to fall ill with measles.
Mr Cassidy, a physician and chairman of the Senate Health Committee, called for “radical honesty” from the administration over the evidence behind proposed changes to the childhood vaccine schedule.
He said he did not know which vaccines Mr Trump was referring to when the president said drug companies should separate children’s vaccinations into five doses, claiming this would lead to “a massive reduction in autism”.
“The vaccines are safe. They’ve been proven to be safe, and the current regimen has been timed to be most convenient to the parent,” Mr Cassidy said.
He added that parents could request a different schedule, but warned: “If he discourages immunisation, there’ll be fewer people immunised, and if we’re speaking of measles, there’ll be more people sick in the hospital or even die.”
Bill Cassidy challenges claims about measles vaccine
Mr Cassidy also criticised the president for previously calling the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine lethal, describing the claim as “absurd”. He said the administration needed to explain what evidence it was based on and who was advising Mr Trump.
The senator said he wanted to hear the Food and Drug Administration commissioner nominee, Dr Heidi Overton, acknowledge that describing the measles vaccine as lethal was wrong. Dr Overton had appeared alongside Mr Trump when he made the claim, which Mr Cassidy had previously described as “almost disqualifying”.
Mr Cassidy said the president’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr Saphier, had earned his vote after telling a committee hearing that the vaccine was safe and people should be immunised.
He said there was an important distinction between a death being “caused by” measles and being “associated with” the disease, but maintained that coroners in Pennsylvania had said three deaths were caused by measles. He also referred to the risk faced by babies in a neonatal intensive care unit after a child with active measles passed through a children’s hospital.
“Having measles is not a kind of victimless kind of experience,” Mr Cassidy said, comparing the consequences of spreading the disease to the danger of driving while drunk.
Asked whether the issue could damage Republicans in November’s midterm elections, Mr Cassidy said polling showed women, who he said made most health decisions for families, overwhelmingly supported childhood immunisation. Confusing messages about vaccines, he said, “probably does hurt”.
Mr Cassidy also criticised a proposed 5,000-dollar payment to Americans if Republicans win the midterms, saying borrowing the money would be inflationary and could increase the cost of mortgages, car loans and credit cards.
He said tackling Social Security was a better way to address the country’s debt, arguing that action would protect promised benefits while dealing with 20% of the nation’s indebtedness.
The senator also said President Trump’s son should not have accepted a 250,000-dollar gift from Russian billionaire Umar Kremlev, who has been reported to have Kremlin links, even though the money had since been repaid. Mr Cassidy said repayment made a difference but that the arrangement had created a damaging appearance because of the donor’s proximity to power.
