Cable News Clips

In remarks delivered on the Senate floor in early February, Cassidy — a physician prior to his political career — told his colleagues that if Kennedy was confirmed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “will not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism.”

Take a wild guess what happened to the CDC website nine months later.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage that previously made the case that vaccines don’t cause autism now says they might. … The revised webpage says: ‘The claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.’

In related news, the claim “the Tooth Fairy does not actually take lost baby teeth from under pillows” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that magical beings are secretly thieving teeth in the dead of night......

A day later, former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden appeared on MS NOW and told viewers, “I never thought I would see the day when you couldn’t trust what’s on the CDC website, but that day has come.”

That was soon followed by a New York Times op-ed co-authored by Frieden and several others who had held the same office. NBC News reported:

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership is ‘unlike anything our country has ever experienced,’ nine former directors and acting directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in a scathing guest essay Monday for The New York Times. … Their tenures date to the late 1970s and span Democratic and Republican administrations, including Trump’s first term.

The mere existence of the opinion piece is itself notable: There is no precedent for nine former CDC chiefs — including Dr. Anne Schuchat, who served as an acting director during Donald Trump’s first term — linking arms to alert the public to a public health menace like this.....

The fact remains, however, that 52 Senate Republicans were given an opportunity to protect Americans from Kennedy — and they failed spectacularly. The more steps that Kennedy takes to put people at risk, the more GOP senators bear responsibility for his radical and dangerous decisions.