Barrasso should clean up RFK’s health care disaster he helped create

I didn’t really expect Wyoming’s senior U.S. Sen. John Barrasso to save America from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. During his short tenure as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has recklessly played “whack-a-mole” with the heads of agencies we depend on to keep us alive.

No, I always thought Barrasso would use his position as the No. 2 Senate Republican to do what’s best for himself, to keep in the good graces of President Donald Trump. Kennedy is an environmental attorney who has no credentials in medicine, science or administration, but Barrasso managed to usher him through the confirmation process. 

More than 75 Nobel laureates and tens of thousands of physicians urged the Senate to reject Kennedy — probably the most well-known anti-vaxxer in the country — because it would put the public’s health in jeopardy. The arguments used by Barrasso — who likes to be known as “Wyoming’s Doctor” — to prop up his nomination were not the least bit convincing. 

They also gave the senator no cover now that Kennedy’s opponents sense the Trump administration might not put up much of a fight to preserve the secretary’s job as bitter calls for his resignation mount.

It never made any sense to me that Kennedy skated through the confirmation process without needing even to pretend he was credible. But I suppose it helped to have prominent Republicans like Barrasso ushering him through.

“[Kennedy] told the Finance Committee, ‘I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine,’” Barrasso said the morning of the confirmation vote. “‘I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines.’ The Senate has every reason to take him at his word.”

Just not those words. The irresponsible medical theories Kennedy has advanced over the years, before anyone imagined he could parlay a failed independent presidential bid into running HHS? Sure, there’s no reason to doubt he believes all of them.

Here’s a sample: Kennedy falsely links childhood vaccines and the rise of autism, and claims there’s a massive cover-up to hide it from the public. He opposes well-established public health tools like the fluoridation of drinking water, and claims without any credible evidence that antidepressants and mass shootings could be linked.

Kennedy rejects established science that H.I.V. causes AIDS. He’s suggested, again without evidence, that the coronavirus targeted and spared certain ethnic groups. In an August 2020 speech, Kennedy said he was open to the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic was, in fact, a “plandemic” — an infectious disease outbreak orchestrated by government officials to subdue the populace.

Despite decades of Kennedy’s controversial, often flatly wrong statements on medicine and science, Barrasso said we should all just take his word on everything, and it’ll be fine. Barrasso apparently wasn’t worried that Trump was giving the keys for all U.S. health agencies to an unhinged man, or even about his own culpability as an elected federal official in Wyoming if everything Kennedy did went to hell. 

Which it certainly has. 

Barrasso didn’t criticize Kennedy when he fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez, who had been in the job for less than a month, even after three prominent CDC leaders resigned in protest. KFF Health News called it “a major offensive” designed to “seize control of the agency and impose an anti-vaccine, anti-science agenda.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, a physician and chair of the Senate Health Committee, forced Barrasso’s hand when he quickly called for oversight of these “high-profile departures.” It was impossible for Barrasso to pretend nothing was amiss, so he cautiously carved out some time in the Senate Finance Committee to test the waters.

“Sec. Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines,” Barrasso said. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.”

Let’s be clear: the senator wasn’t exactly a profile in courage for pointing out that vaccines have saved an estimated 154 million lives worldwide over the past 50 years, or saying, “I support vaccines. I’m a doctor. Vaccines work.”

But I bet it was more than most of his Wyoming constituents thought he would do to finally put some distance between himself and an embattled RFK Jr.

If Kennedy does ultimately get the heave-ho, this is a good time for Equality State voters to tell Barrasso they expect him to do more for their access to affordable health care than just go back to babysitting Trump’s next HHS nominee. Kennedy will leave a massive mess to clean up.

Instead of strongly encouraging people to vaccinate their kids during a measles outbreak in Texas, Kennedy downplayed their significance and instead promoted fringe theories about prevention and treatments such as cod liver oil and vitamin A. Do any countries have an anti-health czar? Could we send him there?

How much damage has Kennedy done to vaccine research programs? In August, he announced HHS is terminating awards and contracts with pharmaceutical companies and universities and canceling 22 investment projects worth nearly $500 million. No new mRNA-based projects will be initiated.

“The data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu,” Kennedy said. But infectious disease experts said mRNA technology successfully prevents severe disease, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, so getting rid of it would potentially affect our preparedness for future pandemics.

In May, HHS canceled $700 million in funds pledged to pharmacology company Moderna to develop a vaccination for avian flu. The Washington Post said Kennedy was being “at best shortsighted and at worst catastrophic” by willfully rejecting a vaccine that has the potential to save millions of lives.

On my bingo card for the scariest Trump cabinet pick of ‘em all, RFK Jr. has always been front and center. And I had completely forgotten about the news that broke during Kennedy’s aborted presidential campaign last year that he said in a 2012 court deposition that a doctor believed his brain scan abnormality “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” (Thanks for the info, The New York Times! Good to know.)

My point is Barrasso didn’t have to let nature run its course with this most shameful nominee, but I don’t think he wanted Trump to blame him for not getting Kennedy confirmed.

If allegedly paying a minor for sex was enough to put the kibosh to the idea of Rep. Matt Goetz as our attorney general, I think a few well-chosen, closed-door reminders to senators from Barrasso about all the bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories Kennedy has warmly embraced would have spared America’s health care system this recent disaster.

Following Kennedy’s hearing, reporters asked Barrasso if he supports Kennedy. The senator said, “I support the president.”

What else could an honest politician and doctor say?