RFK's Moves So Far

Title: RFK's Moves So Far

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. With so many things happening all at once in the new Trump administration and the pushback to it, it's easy for things to fall through the cracks if they're not the shiniest object at any given moment. One thing we're doing here is to continue a Health and Climate Tuesday series through at least the first 100 days so those things don't get completely lost.

For example, the main headlines today from most news organizations are about Musk demanding that federal employees justify their work, and about Ukraine. Maybe you haven't seen this. From the Associated Press, RFK Jr says panel will examine childhood vaccine schedule after promising not to change it, or from the New York Times, maybe you haven't seen this, Trump is freezing money for clean energy. Red states have the most to lose. We'll talk about both of those stories.

Joining us now is Julie Rovner, who covers health care for-- She's the Washington bureau chief for KFF News, and she spent 16 years as a health policy reporter for NPR. Julie, welcome back to WNYC.

Julie Rovner: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play a couple of RFK clips to set this up for our listeners. Here's a key moment from his confirmation hearing to be Health and Human Services secretary when he was being questioned by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.

RFK Jr: Senator I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary and makes it difficult or discourages people from taking

Senator Ron Wyden: Anybody who--

Brian Lehrer: That's what he said then. Here's what he's saying now that has people questioning his honesty. This is from his first official remarks last week to the thousands of employees in the workforce at HHS. Listeners, pay attention because he mentioned several things here that he plans to investigate, but note the first one is childhood vaccines, which he implicates as a possible cause of chronic disease.

RFK Jr: We will convene representatives of all viewpoints to study the causes for the drastic rise in chronic disease. Some of the possible factors we will investigate were formally taboo or insufficiently scrutinized. A childhood vaccine schedule, electromagnetic radiation, glyphosate, other pesticides, ultra-processed foods, artificial food additives, SSRI, and other psychiatric drugs. Nothing is going to be off-limits.

Brian Lehrer: Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr last week. As some of you know, this is happening just as there's a big measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico like we haven't been seeing in this country, mostly among children, and it's being attributed by experts mostly to vaccine hesitancy by parents, seeing all this debate about science that scientists say has already been established. Julie, what just happened here? Did Kennedy snooker the Senate or some of the American people into thinking he would leave vaccination alone in a way that he will now not?

Julie Rovner: It certainly looks that way. The Advisory Council on Immunization Practices, which is the CDC committee of outside experts that meets a couple of times a year to make recommendations and look at studies on whether to add or take away vaccines that it recommends both for children and for adults, was supposed to meet starting tomorrow and he canceled that meeting. That was literally one of the first things he did after being sworn in.

The meeting has been "postponed" but they haven't said until when. That has a lot of people very worried about what he might do, whether he might try to basically fire all of the members of that committee and repopulate it with people who are more to his thinking, we are waiting and seeing, but certainly it was not just Senator Wyden, but Senator Bill Cassidy, who's chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and a big backer of vaccinations, a doctor who likes to tell a story about a patient of his who could have been vaccinated against hepatitis B but didn't and got hepatitis B and almost died.

He had Kennedy absolutely promise that he was not going to tinker with the workings of ACIP, and of course, that was literally the first thing he did when he got into office. I was going to bring up Senator Cassidy, too. In fact, I have a clip to play. He's the Louisiana Republican, folks, who's an MD and absolutely not a vaccine skeptic. He was an RFK Jr skeptic in the hearings. If Cassidy had decided to vote against RFK, I think his nomination would have been defeated, but Senator Cassidy decided to vote yes on RFK's confirmation. He took to the Senate floor, Dr Senator Cassidy did, to say this.

Senator Bill Cassidy: Now, Mr. Kennedy and the administration reached out seeking to reassure me regarding their commitment to protecting the public health benefit of vaccination.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know, Julie, if Senator Cassidy has reacted to what Kennedy said in his speech last week and the other thing that you brought up? Does Cassidy already feel betrayed? If so, has he stated so publicly?

Julie Rovner: He's talked about the measles epidemic that you mentioned, the measles outbreak in West Texas, urging people to get vaccinated. This was on social media, and there was a lot of pushback. It's like, "Hello, you could have done something about this. He hasn't really addressed publicly what Kennedy has done so far, but I think it's probably safe to say that he's not terribly happy right now.

Brian Lehrer: In that Senate floor speech endorsing RFK, Cassidy also said this. Oh, okay. No, I thought I had another clip that I don't have, but do you think there's any guarantees from RFK about lines that he won't cross that could be him as a conspiracy theorist implicating the measles vaccine has a relationship to autism when that's been thoroughly debunked over many studies, over many years, because what Cassidy said-- Let's see if I can find the text on that.

We're going to queue up a clip. Sorry, I'm going to talk to my engineer now. This is the clip called Vaccines and Autism. We're going to play a little bit more here of Senator Bill Cassidy.

Senator Bill Cassidy: He has also committed that he'd work within current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems and not establish parallel systems. It confirmed he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations without changes. CDC will not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism.

Brian Lehrer: Has Kennedy gone back on any of those specific promises yet? Again, to the general question, is he indicating that he's going to go back or even hinting that he's going to go back on any of those things?

Yes, by postponing or canceling the ACIP meeting that was supposed to be happening this week, he's already gone back on one of his explicit promises that Senator Cassidy assured when he was giving his floor speech. He assured his fellow senators that Kennedy had given him, Cassidy, his personal assurance that he wouldn't do any of these things, some of which he has already done. I think there's a really important nuance here, which is what people are most worried about.

It's not just that Kennedy had promised that he won't deter people from getting vaccines. The job of public health for decades, for a century more than that, has been to assure the public that they should get vaccines. We're seeing this in real-time with this measles outbreak in Texas. Measles is so contagious that if someone with measles is in a room and leaves, the virus can hang around in the air for a couple of hours. You don't even have to be in the room with someone who has measles to catch measles.

That's how contagious it is. Vaccines have done an amazing job. The measles vaccine is one of the most effective vaccines that we have. The concern is not even so much that Kennedy would try to deter people from getting vaccines, but that he would fail to encourage people to get vaccines. That's something that Senator Cassidy and other public health officials are very worried about and remain very worried about.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, so we need to parse some language here from that first RFK clip that we played with Senator Wyden where he said he wouldn't do anything to discourage people from taking vaccines, and yet in his speech to the HHS employees, he said he would study the childhood vaccine schedule. Even just that, by saying he's going to study it, he's sowing doubt, right?

Julie Rovner: Exactly. That's exactly why many of the medical groups were very worried and opposed his appointment as HHS secretary in the first place. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is basically the chief public health officer for the United States. They're worried about someone who's been such an outspoken vaccine skeptic in this job.

Brian Lehrer: Further parsing the language in that original RFK clip, when he said he wouldn't do anything to discourage people from taking vaccines, then he said in his speech last week that he would study the childhood vaccine schedule. Is it possible these are not mutually exclusive, like he's just referring to the timing of when kids are supposed to get which vaccines or something like that.

Julie Rovner: It's possible, but again, the concern is about sowing doubt. One of the concerns with the schedule is that now there are so many recommended vaccines that parents worry. It's like, "Why are my children getting so many vaccines so close together? Isn't that dangerous?" It has been studied relentlessly. It continues to be studied. That's what the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is for. It's to look at those studies and decide the benefits and risks of vaccine.

Vaccines have to stand up to an extremely high risk-benefit ratio in order to be approved because, unlike treatments where if you don't get a treatment, you may die of the illness, vaccines are protecting you against something you don't have yet. They must be very safe in order to justify giving them. That's what ACIP is for, and that's what the experts on ACIP basically do. These are people who spend their careers looking at things like this and balancing risk versus benefit.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any comments or questions about the latest news on RFK and the childhood vaccine schedule or healthcare as a right, which he would not affirm should be the case in this country when asked by Bernie Sanders, we're going to play that clip in a minute, or other things from his remarks to the Health and Human Services workforce last week, like on pesticides and microplastics and SSRI antidepressants, which we're going to get into. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text.

We're going to bring in an additional guest in addition to Julie Rovner from KFF Health News in a minute. I just want to go back to Bill Cassidy for a second. I'm thinking of Bill Cassidy as the Susan Collins of vaccination. Remember when Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine decided to vote yes on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh because she was convinced he would uphold the Roe vs. Wade Abortion rights precedent? She either fooled everyone or got fooled by Kavanaugh.

Now, maybe history will record that Bill Cassidy is the Susan Collins of irresponsible American vaccine policy if Kennedy continues to sow doubt, and that has health consequences like has happened with the Trump-Kavanaugh abortion bans. We'll see. Julie, my understanding is that the pharmaceutical industry did not oppose RFK's nomination even though they do profit from vaccines. Why do you think they didn't?

Julie Rovner: Vaccines, of course, are a very low-profit part of what the pharmaceutical industry does. In fact, one of the issues with vaccines over the years is that the pharmaceutical industry was so worried about all of the money that it was losing that we weren't going to get any more vaccines. That's why the government created a vaccine injury compensation program. That's a whole nother discussion. A lot of industry was very quiet about RFK Jr's nomination.

I think they were just worried about getting on the wrong side, not so much of RFK Jr, but of Donald Trump who selected him. I think industry-- they have seen that this Republican administration does not play well with people who do not agree with it. That's basically where they are. I was frankly surprised. I've covered a lot of HHS secretary nominations in my 40 years of doing this, and with the exception of some of the public health groups that came out very strongly against him, the health industry in general was pretty quiet.

Brian Lehrer: Have you been following the measles outbreak in West Texas? Do you know how unusual this is for the United States?

Julie Rovner: Yes, and yes. It's not the first. We had a rather notable outbreak that started at Disneyland in California. I think that was about a decade ago, or maybe it was 2018 or 2019. It topped out at about 100 cases, which is about where we are now in West Texas and New Mexico. Again, one of the things we know particularly about the measles vaccine is that you really need to have over 95% of people vaccinated in order to have what's known as herd immunity.

We had herd immunity in this country for quite a while. The only measles outbreaks we would see were people who mostly traveled to other countries where measles is still endemic and brought it back. It would be contained fairly quickly if enough people are vaccinated that it stops spreading. The concern now is that we have seen so much vaccine hesitancy. Some of these counties in Texas are places where vaccine exceptions, which you can get for your kids, otherwise they have to be vaccinated to go to public school.

We've seen very high numbers of parents who have basically excused their children from these vaccines. There is concern that there is a large enough unvaccinated population that this could quickly get out of hand. We don't know that it will yet, and we'll have to see, but there is a lot of concern about what's going on in West Texas and New Mexico.

Brian Lehrer: It's not just rfk, it's Republican leaders in Texas, if I can put it in those partisan terms, you tell me if that's accurate, who've been amplifying vaccine skepticism, maybe because they're really opposed to other political things having to do with COVID mandates or whatever, and it's having these impacts?

Julie Rovner: Yes. I think it's not just Texas. It just happens that Texas is where this outbreak began. It's possible in other states, and it is particularly red states where states have made it easier for parents to basically opt their children out of otherwise required vaccines, but we are losing that herd immunity that we had for so long. It is a real concern. We've seen outbreaks now of whooping cough, things that vaccines have been protecting against for generations now.

I think parents forget they don't know what these diseases look like because they've never seen them and they assume that they're mild. We still have people saying, "Oh, it's good to get measles, then you're protected for the rest of your life." It's not good to get measles, and there's a fairly high rate of complications. Some of the complications can be very serious with measles.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Julie Rovner. We'll bring in another reporter from USA Today who looked at what Kennedy said and also what Trump himself has said in an executive order about studying the antidepressants known as SSRIs, sowing a particular kind of doubt about those. Is there more of a there there? We'll ask our other guest. We're also going to play that clip of Kennedy not affirming health care as a right in a really interesting exchange.

Wait till you hear the reason that he gave with Senator Bernie Sanders. We'll start taking your calls and texts at 212-433-WNYC. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're talking about whether RFK Jr has already gone back on promises that he made to the Senate and the American public in his confirmation hearings with Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for KFF Health News and host of their weekly health policy news podcast, What the Health. As some of you know, she previously served 16 years as a health policy correspondent for NPR. Julie is author of the reference book Healthcare Politics and Policy A to Z.

Also joining us now is Alyssa Goldberg, reporter for USA Today, who, among other things, has a master's degree from the Harvard Medical School in media, medicine and health. She had an article the other day called Trump and RFK Jr Go After SSRIs. Alyssa, welcome to WNYC.

Alyssa Goldberg: Hey, thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: For people who haven't been with us since the beginning of the segment, I want to replay the clip that has made this news about whether RFK is already breaking his promises to the American people, particularly on not doing anything to discourage vaccines. When he spoke to his workforce, the thousands of people who work for HHS, until they all get laid off by Elon Musk. He lists vaccines first here among things he's going to study for possible connections with chronic disease increases. Listen to what else is on this list.

RFK Jr: We will convene representatives of all viewpoints to study the causes for the drastic rise in chronic disease. Some of the possible factors we will investigate were formerly taboo or insufficiently scrutinized. A childhood vaccine schedule, electromagnetic radiation, glyphosate, other pesticides, ultra-processed foods, artificial food additives, SSRI and other psychiatric drugs. Nothing is going to be off limits.

Brian Lehrer: Actually, Julie, before we even go to Alyssa on her article on SSRIs, here's a text from a listener who heard that clip and wrote, "He quite frustratingly mixes some very valid concerns. Microplastics, food additives, et cetera, and a bunch of bunk, and I feel like the bunk taints the more valid concerns." I think that's very well put in terms of the challenge, especially to potential vaccine hesitancy or the increase in potential vaccine hesitancy from the way RFK mixes things, right?

Julie Rovner: Absolutely. I think that was the same concern expressed by a number of senators, Republican and Democrats. There's widespread concern about things like ultra-processed food and the potential impact that it could be having. There are a lot of things we don't know about why there has been an increase in autism. We're pretty confident that it is not because of vaccines. That has been studied rather widely, but we don't know why it is. Is it just being diagnosed more? Is there something else going on?

Is there something else in the environment? He expresses a lot of concerns that a lot of people share, but as you point out, also a lot of concerns that have been pretty well debunked scientifically.

Brian Lehrer: Alyssa, SSRIs, those antidepressants were on the list, the RFK clip that said he would study things as a cause of chronic disease. Trump issued an executive order to study the effects of SSRIs on children. Remind us what some of the antidepressants are that fall under that category.

Alyssa Goldberg: Some of the popular SSRIs would be things like Zoloft and Prozac. Those are the first two that people think of. Lexapro as well. SSRIs themselves are-- That stands for serotonin reuptake inhibitors. These are a class of antidepressants that treat depression along with other mental health conditions by increasing the level of serotonin in the brain. That's the neurotransmitter that helps regulate your mood, appetite, sleep, social behavior, all those types of things.

Brian Lehrer: You reported on not just what RFK Jr said, but what Trump as President of the United States listed in an executive order that named SSRIs. Why is the President of the United States issuing an executive order on SSRIs, or at least what specifically did it say?

Alyssa Goldberg: Trump instructed his administration to assess the "threat" posed to children by the prescription of SSRIs, along with antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight loss drugs, lumped those all in together. This came part of his executive order on February 13th, which was establishing RFK Jr's Make America Healthy Again commission, which was a big part of both his presidential campaign and then the Make America Healthy campaign that transpired again with Trump's presidency.

This aimed to end the "childhood chronic disease crisis" and the over reliance on medication and treatments. The executive order trended really quickly online, and a of people, adults as well, were defending their experiences of using SSRIs. Even though the executive order did focus specifically on the impact on children, adolescents, it did broaden up pretty quickly to include all SSRI users in the broader public.

Brian Lehrer: Do scientists have suspicions about SSRIs and chronic diseases generally? Because that's the link that RFK was positing, or at least saying he would study in the clip with chronic diseases. When we say chronic diseases, we usually think about things like cancer and heart disease and diabetes. Do scientists, based on your reporting, have suspicions about SSRIs and chronic diseases?

Alyssa Goldberg: Scientists do not have suspicions about SSRIs being to blame for chronic illnesses, but a lot of experts do agree that more research on SSRIs could be beneficial, especially when navigating best practices for treating pediatric patients, because the differences in how SSRIs work in adolescence in comparison to adults are still poorly understood. There are things like antidepressant suicidality, which can occur in some patients. It's not very common, but it is a legitimate phenomenon.

It is more likely to occur in SSRI users under the age of 25. The thing is, RFK Jr isn't just saying that we need to better research SSRIs. He's spreading false and scientifically disproven claims about the medication. Like he said that there could be a link to school shootings, even though studies done on a potential link between antidepressants and school shootings showed that there's no causation between the two.

Brian Lehrer: There's somewhat of a there there in terms of a legitimate question. This is where it gets tough for science communicators, for journalists, for policymakers, for politicians to be accurate without leaving people confused. Are we prescribing medication too much for kids to deal with emotional issues that may be more safely or effectively treated by addressing the circumstances of their lives? People would say that's a legitimate question, right, Alyssa?

Alyssa Goldberg: Yes, I would think that would be a legitimate question as well. We have seen the monthly antidepressant dispensing rate for young people increasing by a very significant rate. According to a 2024 study in the journal Pediatrics, the prescription rate of antidepressants for young people increased from 66.3 from January 2016 to December 2022. This has gone side by side with an increase rate of diagnosing depression. We saw a big increase in young people that experience depression and under mental health issues during the COVID pandemic.

That could definitely play a big role in it, but we have seen a big increase in the amount of people who are getting prescribed according to this study in Pediatrics.

Brian Lehrer: Julie Rovner, do you have anything to add on this?

Julie Rovner: No, although I will say that this is of a piece with everything else, which is that you have these legitimate questions and things that need to be studied, but you also have these things that have been studied repeatedly and there is a confusion there. I thought you put it very well about how to explain these things, allaying concerns without heightening concerns about things that we actually pretty much know.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here is Mary in Massapequa Park. You're on WNYC. Hi, Mary.

Mary: Good morning. I'm really happy to speak to everyone because I'm a public health nurse and I would just like to tell you the impact of what is going on. I see children almost every day in my practice where I see only children. It's become more and more difficult for me to convince parents to get the vaccines for their children. They trust me, but it just takes me more time. The more time that I have to spend explaining things to them decreases the amount of time that I can spend on other things.

What RFK is doing is he might not take those vaccines away from us, but he's going to sow enough doubt that he's going to scare the daylights out of parents into being vaccinated. He's also going to defund us. I'm a Vaccines for Children provider, which means I get free vaccines through New York State from the federal government, from CDC to take care of poor children who can't afford the vaccines. My vaccines were late with no explanation. That's never happened to me in the eight years that I've been practicing.

This is really very frightening. Measles destroys the immune system for two years and nine months following the disease. This is not an innocuous disease. My sister almost died from measles in 1956.

Brian Lehrer: You're telling me as a pediatric nurse practitioner that it's not just in, let's say, a red state like Texas, but in New York State where you are, where you're seeing vaccine hesitancy and having to convince more parents to get their kids the routine vaccines?

Mary: Yes, I am. It's not the parents fault. The parents are wonderful. They want to do the best thing for their children. We always agree on one bottom line. We both want the best for their children. I say to them, "I'm hearing the same information that you are hearing. Can I tell you what I know? Do I have your permission to tell you what I know about the vaccine?" I have to say 99% of the time I can convince the parents to vaccinate their children. I also tell them the stories about what happened in my family.

My sister almost died from measles. My mother had polio. My grandmother died in 1955 from cervical cancer. People have no memory of these diseases. When I tell them my family stories, that puts a face on things.

Brian Lehrer: Mary, thank you very much. Leon in Long beach, you're on WNYC. Hello, Leon. That's Long Beach, New York, a neighbor of the previous caller in Massapequa Park. Hi, Leon.

Leon: Hi, good morning. It's my understanding that I have not verified that Western European nations have a very different schedule for giving childhood vaccines, that they do not give anywhere near as much in the first months of a baby's life. I'll let you discuss that. Maybe there are reasons for that.

Brian Lehrer: Leon, thank you. Julie, have you done an international comparison?

Julie Rovner: I am not familiar with international comparisons of childhood vaccine schedules.

Brian Lehrer: That's something that we can look into and see if there are differences in what they do in Western Europe, for example. Bill in Ellenton, Florida, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bill.

Bill: Hello. Thank you for taking my call. I wanted to say that let RFK do his studies and since everything is all right already, he should come to the same conclusion that the vaccines are safe and it would give everyone a bit of confidence in the vaccines. That's it.

Brian Lehrer: Bill, that's really interesting. Thank you. Julie, let me throw that one to you as well. Even though we should discuss if he's going back on what he said in his confirmation hearing, maybe to launch another study of the vaccine may wind up just confirming what many studies have shown if we're talking about, for example, the MMR vaccine and that it doesn't cause autism and it'll be found yet again and then more of the vaccine hesitancy will go away. Is that a possible outcome of all this?

Julie Rovner: Yes, it absolutely is. I think a number of senators mentioned that. On the other hand, is that necessarily the best use of scarce science dollars? At the same time that all this is going on, we're seeing enormous cutbacks at the National Institutes of Health and basically a freeze on money going out the door and scientists and universities being faced with closing labs. Would it be good to have reassurance about some of these things? Yes, but if we're only going to be able to do some studies, why should we repeat studies that we've already done rather than spend that money on new science?

Brian Lehrer: Another listener texts, "We should remember that the anti-vax stuff started long before Trump and Kennedy and it started as a lefty crunchy thing. Park Slope was a hotbed." Alyssa, you have an article called RFK Jr Food Dyes Comment and his Crunchy Moms Fan Base. we'll talk about the dye itself in a minute, but does your reporting indicate that there are really any crunchy moms who are in his fan base anymore as opposed to right wing meat-eating moms?

Alyssa Goldberg: What's been really interesting about this idea of the crunchy moms, and this is something that even outside of my reporting, has just been a conversation that has been very interesting to see unfold, is that, agree the crunchy mom title used to be this more leftist hippie idea and now it's because of in part RFK having his Make America Healthy campaign, aligning himself with this fight against food dyes. The term crunchy moms has almost now become more aligned with RFK Jr. and Trump's campaigning and now presidency than it is now with leftism or the hippie moms.

Brian Lehrer: A certain kind of red dye was just banned. That's an actual thing, right?

Alyssa Goldberg: Yes, Red Dye 3 was banned in January by the FDA.

Brian Lehrer: What was RFK's comment that you wrote about?

Alyssa Goldberg: RFK has throughout his campaign just been an outspoken voice against food dyes. That has resonated with a lot of moms and Make America Healthy Again supporters who have been for a long time concerned about what's going into their food. In part, the banning of Red Dye number 3 was from a push from a lot of these people saying that red food dye has been linked to cancer and it's banned in other countries, so why are we still consuming it in our food here?

That has been a way in for a lot of people to get behind his campaign by really zoning in on the food dye and then opening themselves up to some of his other claims. Even though the food dye has merit to it, it does open up the door to then listening to a lot of other conspiracy theories or misinformation when it comes to things like SSRIs or vaccines.

Brian Lehrer: You also have an article about moms who want RFK to legalize raw milk. Your headline asks, But What About Bird Flu? Who are those moms, and what about bird flu?

Alyssa Goldberg: There has been a push-- First, RFK himself said that he only drinks raw milk. He said it, I believe last year. A lot of moms have been then excited about his appointment for HSS, because they want him to legalize raw milk. It can't be sold currently in conception in as many as 20 states. Warnings from healthcare professionals and food scientists say that it poses a plethora of health risks.

It can contain high levels of bacteria, including Listeria and a strain of E. coli that can cause kidney failure and death, whereas milk sold in stores goes through the pasteurization process, which kills pathogens that cause disease. Bird flu has been a big rise in concern because it has spread now to about 973 herds of dairy cows in 17 states since March. In January, the first human death from bird flu was reported in Louisiana, and yet people are still drinking raw milk, which we know can contain bird flu.

I spoke to John Lucy, who is a dairy researcher and he grew up drinking raw milk on his family farm in Ireland. He now warns other people about the risk. He says that while health officials aren't totally concerned yet about human to human transmission of bird flu, right now it's been people to animal/animal to people, bird flu is highly pathogenic and when cows do get infected with bird flu, the highest level of the virus is concentrated in their mammary gland.

He compares it to COVID 19 in humans. Our highest viral loads were in our saliva and our mucus, but in cow's milk, that's where their highest viral load of bird flu would be.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to do another segment later in the show today about the egg shortage because of bird flu in the New York City area and what people are doing about that. Before we end this segment, I want to play another clip from the RFK confirmation hearing that didn't get as much attention as it might have if everyone weren't so focused on the single issue of vaccination with Kennedy. This is an exchange between RFK and Senator Bernie Sanders in which Kennedy states that health care is not a human right and blames people who get cancer from cigarettes rather than our for-profit healthcare system. It starts with Senator Sanders' question.

Senator Bernie Sanders: Despite spending, as you indicated, two or three times as much per capita on health care as other nations, we have 85 million people who are uninsured, underinsured, we have all kinds of chronic illnesses, our life expectancy is lower than other countries, and for working-class people in this country, they are living six, seven years shorter lives than the top 1%. We got a problem. I'm going to suggest some ideas that I think can remedy that.

Last year the insurance industry in this country made over $70 billion while at the same time 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Do you agree with me that the United States should join every other major country on earth and guarantee health care to all people as a human right? Yes. No?

RFK Jr: Senator, I can't give you a yes or no answer to that question.

Senator Bernie Sanders: Is health care a human right?

RFK Jr: In the way that free speech is a human right, I would say it's different because free speech doesn't cost anybody anything, but in healthcare, if you smoke cigarettes for 20 years and you get cancer, you are now taking from the pool.

Brian Lehrer: RFK Jr at his confirmation hearing with Senator Bernie Sanders. Julie, what strikes me about his response there is that people in Canada smoke cigarettes too. People in the UK and Germany and elsewhere smoke cigarettes too, and in a bunch of those countries health care is a right. How do you interpret his answer?

Julie Rovner: I think he wanted to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, and saying healthcare is a human right would not win him a lot of friends on the Republican side of the aisle. I think it was as much a practical political answer as anything else. We'll get into more of this when we see Dr. Oz, who will soon be sitting at his confirmation hearings to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the health insurance arm of the Department of Health and Human Services. We'll see how that goes.

Brian Lehrer: Just on the implications of that answer before you go, besides the politics of it, yes, he wanted to get confirmed by a Republican Senate, health insurance reform is mostly up to Congress. Does the secretary of HHS also have policymaking power in ways that are relevant to say who gets coverage or what kinds of delays and denials the insurance companies can issue or anything like that?

Julie Rovner: Yes. When Congress wrote the Affordable Care Act, they gave the HHS secretary enormous authority over it. I remember reading the bill at the time thinking, "You know people who are writing this bill, there's not always going to be an HHS secretary that you agree with." Although I think Robert F. Kennedy, Jr Might agree with them more than some of the previous Republican HHS secretaries. In fact, the HHS secretary does have a lot of authority now over how the nation's health insurance system is run.

Brian Lehrer: We were going to end it here, but we just got a caller who I want to take if she's actually ready to go on the air with a story that she's telling our screener because raw milk came up, Alyssa, in your reporting, and we talked about that a few minutes ago and RFK saying he only drinks raw milk. Jody, in Katona, New York, has a raw milk horror story that's going to be sad to hear, I think. Jody, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Jody: Thank you for taking my call. I love you, Brian, as you know. I'm always sending you fan mail. My sister was part of a group of five children in my family. We went on a lovely holiday to Nova Scotia and we went and stayed at a farm. My sister drank raw milk and developed tuberculosis of the kidney, which is an extremely rare thing to develop, and spent the rest of her young life going to doctors, living in hospitals. It was the cause of her early death and it was a tragic loss for our entire family. It was due specifically to the raw milk she drank.

Brian Lehrer: Doctors made that conclusion because I don't want to ever-

Jody: Yes, absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: -be easy about cause and effect, you know what I mean?

Jody: No, no, no. My parents took her to all the top doctors in New York City. She visited many, many-- because it's such an unusual disease and it's usually seen in high-poverty areas, which was, luckily, not our experience. After much much, much, much work, they discovered that that was the cause and it was just tragic. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your cause and the courage that it took to revisit your pain with regard to that loss and say it on the radio. Alyssa, in your reporting on raw milk, I don't know how much, I know you did that one story at least on RFK and raw milk and bird flu, but have you come across anything like that?

Alyssa Goldberg: I haven't come across anything like that and thank you for sharing your story. I'm so sorry for your loss. There has been a link to-- Like I said, there's listeria. It can result in kidney failure and death as well has been cautioned by experts, but I haven't seen anything specifically on tuberculosis.

Brian Lehrer: Alyssa Goldberg from USA Today, Julie Rovner from KFF Health News, thank you both so much.

Julie Rovner: Thank you, Brian.

Alyssa Goldberg: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More in a minute.

 

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