Nick Langworthy Questions RFK Jr. About Nitrile Glove Shortage & Infant Formula Crisis

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During a House Energy Committee hearing last week, Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY) asked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the shortage of nitrile gloves and the infant formula crisis.

Transcript

00:00for five minutes of questioning. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, first I'd just

00:05like to offer you a moment to respond to the outlandish claims that were put in front of you

00:09just now. Yeah, as I said we've got 27 HIDV divisions. Some of those were cut. Some of the

00:17studies that were not where we poured billions of dollars in and they were yielding nothing have

00:21been cut. We're looking for a real solution and we're looking to do evidence-based gold standard

00:27science and we're going to do that and we're going to do it to take care of the of the most

00:33desperate most vulnerable Americans including people of HIV and there has been no withdrawal

00:40of any of that commitment. Thank you very much Mr. Secretary and I appreciate your leadership and

00:45your vision and your efforts to make America healthy again. One area that's of particular

00:52importance to me in my district is newborn screening and with changes to the advisory committee on

00:57heritable disorders in newborns and children there's some uncertainty about the future of

01:02recommended uniform newborn screening panels. I'd love to hear what you're thinking about

01:08ensuring continued progress related to newborn screening and whether you see an opportunity

01:13for us to work together to strengthen and modernize this process. Yeah, you know the the program

01:19for newborn screening and the FACA the federal advisory committee was started I think in 2019 or was set to

01:28expire in 2019. It was reauthorized every year since then but over the last two years it hasn't produced a

01:35single recommendation. We can do that from HRSA and that's what we're going to do. We are working

01:42at HRSA to do to develop new new indications that should be screened for and we're going to continue

01:50to to come to meet that obligation. Thank you very much Mr. Secretary. Now to supply chains. I want to

01:58bring to your attention a national security concern related to the shortage of nitrile gloves. Our nation

02:04depends almost entirely on imports in this area of nitrile gloves with China supplying nearly half of that

02:10supply. Now thanks to the previous administration our current stockpile that the country holds is

02:16about a 10-day supply and much of it is expired or near its expiration date. This means that if China

02:22decided to restrict our access to nitrile gloves tomorrow it could cause serious disruptions to our

02:28health care system. Can we work together with this committee to address this ongoing vulnerability for

02:36our medical supply chain? This is a vulnerability that we're very much aware of. There's questions

02:43about whether we can produce that particular item in this country. I've been traveling over the past

02:51couple of weeks and to Argentina and to Ecuador both of which have an interest in producing these

02:58products for the American market. It's a much more secure supply chain than relying on China.

03:04We're going to continue to offer incentives to develop these products a year but at the same time we're going

03:11to explore our relationships with friendly nations who can produce them in their countries at a low price,

03:18low enough price for use as an ubiquitous item and strengthen our supply chains.

03:25Thank you very much. And also on the area of supply chains, trust in the FDA was shattered under the previous

03:31administration and nowhere was that failure more clear than during the infant formula crisis. The Biden

03:38administration was totally asleep at the wheel while infants got sick, shelves went empty, and the

03:43American people got nothing but silence. Your budget includes $15 million to modernize infant formula

03:51oversight. Can you walk us through how that funding will be used and if the department is working on any

03:55other efforts to strengthen the infant formula supply chain? It was one of our first priorities when I

04:02came into the department. We launched Operation Stork Speed to make sure that the quantity of infant formula is available

04:12is enough to supply the demand but also to improve the quality, to do everything that we can to recalibrate

04:20the formulas. We're doing that right now at FDA and at NIH and we're working with manufacturers all over

04:28the country in Florida, Texas and elsewhere to build up our supply chain so we never have a shortage again.

04:34Well thank you very much Mr. Secretary for your efforts there and for all that you're doing. I have 23 seconds if you want to

04:40respond to any of the other outrageous claims because no one's let you get a word in edgewise over there.

04:45I would love to be here for a conversation and actually a lot of these issues are very complex.

04:51They don't lend themselves easy to sound bites and I would love to have a conversation at some point

04:57with the Democrats about their concerns about these issues. I think our values are the same but

05:05the gentleman's time has expired. The chair now

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