WASHINGTON — Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) on Wednesday warned senators not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next health and human services secretary, sharing a dark story about Kennedy fueling an anti-vaccine misinformation campaign that Green said led to dozens of children dying in Samoa amid a measles outbreak.
“This is an absolute life-or-death decision that the Senate … and frankly the incoming president is poised to make over our future,” Green, who is also a physician, said at a Capitol Hill press conference with other lawmakers who are medical professionals.
The governor traveled to Washington this week specifically to meet with Republican and Democratic senators to urge them to oppose Kennedy’s nomination — the same week Kennedy is on Capitol Hill making his case to Democratic senators about why they should support him.
Green is hoping to take partisanship out of Kennedy’s nomination and get senators in both major political parties focused on the necessity of having a public health professional leading the country’s top health agency.
He’s offering his perspective on a well-known “tragedy” that took place in Samoa in 2019, after two children died due to human error on the part of nurses administering their vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella. The mistake led to some people losing confidence in vaccines, and right around this time, Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccination activist, visited the Pacific island state and campaigned against vaccines on social media.
“A celebrity with no public health experience named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to Samoa, met with the prime minister, met with the secretary of health,” said Green. “He discouraged them from vaccinating. And what happens when you discourage individuals from vaccinating? When they’re afraid, a lot of them refuse to get vaccinated.”
As Kennedy pushed his anti-vaccination campaign — which Green has referred to as disinformation — the inoculation rate plummeted to 31% and the measles virus spread. Samoan leaders asked the Hawaii governor for help, so he went to their island with dozens of health care providers to help vaccinate as many people as possible. By this time, there were approximately 5,000 confirmed cases of measles, Green said, and the outbreak would lead to more than 80 deaths, most of them among children.
“This is no joke when you see pictures of a child with measles, when there are no hospitals around, when there are no ventilators to keep them alive,” said the Hawaii governor. “We witnessed a child literally dying in front of us, just moments as we came into the village. … She was still warm when I put my hands on her face.”
Ultimately, Green and other medical professionals helped vaccinate 37,000 people throughout the country. They staved off more deaths, but he said thousands of people suffered and countless others likely developed encephalopathy, a condition that can cause inflammation in the nervous system that can lead to hearing loss, blindness or intellectual disability.
At the time, Kennedy blamed the dozens of measles deaths on the vaccine itself. There was no evidence for his claim.
“This would not have been necessary, if not for an interloper named Robert F. Kennedy,” Green said Wednesday. “He stopped a week after we did the vaccination program.”
Green urged President-elect Donald Trump to rethink Kennedy’s nomination and instead consider him for a different post. “There may be a very good place for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” he said. “This is not partisan. This is not political. This is medical.”
Green’s press event was hosted by Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.), who is a pediatrician. She said she’s met with lots of parents worried about the safety of vaccines because of misinformation being spread by people like Kennedy.
“Sowing needless doubt in the minds of parents and the citizens of this country should disqualify Robert Kennedy Jr. from this job,” said Schrier. “Make no mistake: Stoking vaccine hesitancy will lead to deaths.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s presidential transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
Green told HuffPost that he’s meeting with 10 senators during his visit to Capitol Hill. He didn’t name names, but suggested all are possibly flexible votes and that one person he’s very interested in talking to is Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is a physician.
“I have a great deal of respect for Sen. Cassidy,” said Green. “I really admire his position on vaccinations. This has been central to his life as a trained physician.”
He said his hope is that the Louisiana Republican can “influence his colleagues” because he understands the medical necessity of vaccines.
Cassidy, who is the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, met with Kennedy for an hour Wednesday. He told HuffPost that they had a “frank conversation,” but declined to say whether he will support his nomination.
“He and I did not talk vaccines,” Cassidy said. “We had a long list of other things we were talking about.”
Over the weekend, Cassidy said in an interview with Fox News that Kennedy is “wrong” about vaccines.
Igor Bobic and Arthur Delaney contributed reporting.