By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) – U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told senators on Wednesday that if Erica Schwartz is confirmed as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she will have the ability to make decisions on vaccines independently.
Kennedy, who is appearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in his seventh congressional hearing this week to discuss his department’s budget, said earlier in the week he had vetted Schwartz’s position on vaccines before she was nominated to run the CDC.
HELP Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is also a physician, asked Kennedy if Schwartz would be allowed to make her own decisions, independent of his political appointees or their views, to which Kennedy agreed. The previous CDC director said Kennedy fired her because she disagreed with his vaccine policies.
President Donald Trump said last week he would nominate Schwartz to be the next CDC director following multiple leadership shakeups at the health agency. She had served as deputy surgeon general during the COVID-19 pandemic in Trump’s first administration.
Her nomination represents a far more traditional pick for this administration, as the White House seeks to focus on more popular issues such as lowering drug prices and food safety, rather than Kennedy’s controversial vaccine policies, with control of Congress up for grabs in November.
It comes after a Massachusetts judge blocked key parts of Kennedy’s effort to reshape U.S. vaccine policy, including a move to reduce the number of shots routinely recommended for children, and his overhaul of a CDC advisory committee on inoculations.
Trump fired CDC Director Susan Monarez last August over her objections to vaccine policy changes planned by Kennedy. Her position was filled by two acting directors: Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill, who was succeeded in February by Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
In a separate hearing earlier on Wednesday, Kennedy said he would share ally and HHS contractor David Geier’s contract with senators by the end of the week. Geier, like Kennedy, is a longtime anti-vaccine activist.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; writing by Michael Erman; Editing by Ryan Patrick Jones and Bill Berkrot)
