Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told members of Congress that there are “thousands” of examples of federal bureaucrats covering up scientific data that contradicted the government’s preferred narrative.
Kennedy’s remarks came in a Senate Finance Committee hearing Thursday, where he was called on to explain his actions as HHS chief—including the August layoff of over 600 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Kennedy defended his “shake-up” as an effort to counter what he called longstanding corruption and politicization at HHS and the CDC—prompting Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., to ask him to “talk about the corruption of science that you’re trying to deal with and trying to correct.”
In response, Kennedy pointed to a 2002 CDC study in Fulton County, Georgia, that compared children who got the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine at the CDC-recommended age to those who got them later.
“The data from that study showed that black boys who got the vaccine on time had a 260% greater chance of getting an autism diagnosis than children who waited,” Kennedy said.
But the chief scientist on that study, Dr. William Thompson, was called into an office by the head of the Immunization Safety Branch of the CDC “in order to destroy that data.”
“Then, they published it without that fact,” Kennedy said.?
Thompson’s account surfaced in 2014, when he provided whistleblower information to then-Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., that he said proved the CDC “intentionally withheld controversial findings” about the connection between the measles vaccine and autism.
Kennedy said, “I could sit here and point to thousands” of similar examples of agency cover-ups.
“It happens all the time,” he concluded. “We are being lied to by these agencies, and we’re going to change that right now.”