Two nominees on course to help lead America’s public health policy have distanced themselves from Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy and his anti-vaccine positions.
Dr. Nicole Saphier and HHS counselor Chris Klomp are on track to become the country’s next surgeon general and deputy HHS secretary, respectively. As such, both would work underneath Kennedy and his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Yet neither hesitated to rebuke the health secretary’s unscientific preachings during Senate confirmation hearings this week.
In one exchange with Republican Senator (and former physician and medical educator) Bill Cassidy, Saphier explained that not only she does “not believe the MMR vaccine to be lethal,” but also that she had “not seen reputable evidence that would suggest vaccines cause autism.”
“I believe the MMR vaccine is our greatest tool for combating measles,” elaborated Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News contributor.
“That’s music,” Cassidy sighed.
“I do not believe childhood vaccines cause autism,” Saphier added.
Klomp similarly dismissed Kennedy’s hokum Tuesday, firmly endorsing the measles vaccine while describing the fight against the current measles outbreak as America’s chief public health priority.
“Unquestionably, the [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine is the single most effective public health tool that we have against measles,” Klomp told Democratic Senator Ron Wyden.
The conspiratorial rhetoric of the anti-vax movement has had disastrous effects on U.S. inoculation rates, spurring a regional measles health crisis that has killed four people this year, a high not seen since 1992. Another 3,200 people have been infected, far exceeding the tally for 2025 by hundreds of cases.
According to CDC data, vaccination coverage for U.S. kindergartners fell by nearly three percent—from 95.2 percent to 92.4 percent—between the 2025-2026 school year and the 2019-2020 school year. The dip is more significant than it seems at face value: The lowered figures place the age groups below the threshold for herd immunity that would protect even unvaccinated members of a community (95 percent.)
Democratic officials have called for Kennedy to be removed from his post since letters emerged unequivocally tying his 2019 anti-vax propaganda trip to Samoa to a lethal measles outbreak that occurred on the island later that year.
Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey said in a statement that Kennedy “cannot be trusted to run HHS for even one more day,” while Hawaii Governor Josh Green—who personally witnessed the Samoan outbreak—said Kennedy needed to immediately resign “for the safety and health of our country.”
Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks told CNN that America’s current measles outbreak could be “tied directly to the horrific leadership of Secretary Kennedy.”
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