Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday to root out corruption between industry and government. Yet the man who wants to be the nation’s Secretary of Health and Human Services refused to rule out personally making money from lawsuits against drug makers. This ought to be disqualifying.
“You just said that you want the American people to know you can’t be bought, your decisions won’t depend on how much money you could make in the future, you won’t go to work for a drug company after you leave HHS,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said. “But you and I both know there’s another way to make money.” Ah, yes. A fellow friend of trial lawyers, Ms. Warren knows their playbook.
Mr. Kennedy’s disclosures show that he has received more than $2.5 million from law firms that have sued drug and vaccine makers. He also has a financial stake in a pending lawsuit against human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine maker Merck. Mr. Kennedy’s trial-lawyer ties and financial interests in litigation against drug makers pose a clear conflict of interest.
Ms. Warren asked RFK Jr. to commit to not “suing the drug companies, and taking your rake out of that, while you are Secretary and for four years after.” He refused. “You’re asking me to not sue drug companies, and I am not going to agree to that,” he said. Why not?
Ms. Warren went on to detail that “there’s a lot of ways that you can influence those future lawsuits, and pending lawsuits, while you are Secretary of HHS.” They include publishing his antivaccine views “on U.S. government letterhead, something a jury might be impressed by.” He could change side effects that appear on vaccine labels.
He could “remove vaccines from special compensation programs, which would open up manufacturers to mass torts,” Ms. Warren continued, or “make more injuries eligible for compensation even if there is no causal evidence.” He could “turn over FDA data to your friends at the law firm and they could use it however it benefited them.”
We never thought we’d hear this, but Ms. Warren has an excellent point that Mr. Kennedy, as HHS Secretary, could have the ability to “kill off access to vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it.” This ought to trouble Republican Senators who profess to care about good government and public health.
