Nominees for the positions of CDC director and assistant secretary for preparedness and response (ASPR) faced tricky questions and some frustration Wednesday from senators on both sides of the aisle.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, MD (R-La.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, asked ASPR nominee Sean Kaufman about his suggestion in a now-deleted LinkedIn post that countries who gave infants a hepatitis B vaccine at birth had the highest rates of hepatitis B.
"Of course, that was misleading," said Cassidy, who is a hepatologist. "It was the people who were not vaccinated that had the burden of disease. So your LinkedIn post was either uninformed or deliberately misleading." He slammed his fist on the dais. "Why would you repeat those damn lies? That destroys trust, and we don't start getting back to where we trust unless people speak the truth."
Erica Schwartz, MD, MPH, the CDC director nominee, also came in for some of Cassidy's wrath. "I felt you were always trying not to answer my questions, which was disappointing," he said to Schwartz at the end of the hearing. "I'm here personally liking you but feeling I have to represent the public health of the U.S.A."
Cassidy laid out his expectations for the hearing right from the beginning. "A lot of this hearing is going to be around vaccines," he said in his opening statement. "So let me be clear; vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and effective. They have saved countless lives, and study after study shows they do not cause autism ... Any equivocation on these facts and I shall not be able to support your nomination, because when trust is destroyed it's hard to be effective."
