During a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee executive session, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) spoke in opposition to Dr. Susan Monarez's nomination to be CDC Director, and ripped into Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to just make a comment because I think it's really important as we consider a CDC nominee today, we talk about the real elephant in the room because we could actually have the best CDC director in the world and it wouldn't change the fact that we have a person leading HHS who is an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and a committee that I fear is failing to do.
00:24It's bipartisan public oversight of public health disasters. Measles cases are at a record 33-year high. They've not been this high since before we eliminated the disease in 2000 and now we're over 1,200 cases. That is really, we believe, also an undercount.
00:44But instead of pounding the pavement to encourage people to get vaccinated, the single most effective protection against measles, as you know, RFK Jr. has been firing every single member of the CDC vaccine advisory panel and he loaded it up with his favorite vaccine skeptics so they can pursue debunked conspiracies.
01:05And I am concerned because this committee, it feels like has all but abandoned its serious oversight of this crisis. We haven't had a hearing on the record-breaking number of measles outbreaks or a hearing on how the CDC vaccine panel is now stacked with people who are actually not vetted and all the previous board members, every single one of them was removed with no credible explanation.
01:31So I really believe we need public oversight. And I really do hope that Dr. Menares will defy my expectations. I hope she will stand up for science and put public health first.
