Brian Schatz: “if you heard your doctor say there is no vaccine that is safe or effective or there are much better candidates than HIV…”

“if you heard your doctor say there is no vaccine that is safe or effective or there are much better candidates than HIV for what causes AIDS or school shootings started happening with the introduction of Prozac and other drugs--if your physician said any of those things to you, you would look for a new physician. Yet, this week, my colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee and Health Committee are going to consider the nomination of someone who has not only said all of those things and more, but, if confirmed, he would be responsible for the health and well-being of the entire Nation. The unique threat that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., poses to our country really cannot be overstated, and now it is up to us, the 100 Members of the U.S. Senate, to deny him the opportunity to use America as one big test lab for bygone diseases. I want to explain what I mean by that. He thinks that FDA trials are not enough to determine the efficacy of a vaccine, and so he is suggesting that we use placebo in the population. What does that mean? Something might save someone's life, and something might be essentially a sugar pill, but you don't get to know. There are international conventions against this approach. The Tuskegee experiments conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service were universally rejected, and the Congress banned this approach because you cannot withhold lifesaving care from anyone.…”