[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 18 (Tuesday, January 28, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S405-S406]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               January 6

  Mr. President, finally, on January 6, today, Senate Democrats will go 
to the Senate floor with a resolution that says something very simple: 
We condemn pardoning individuals guilty of assaulting Capitol Police. I 
thank my good friend Patty Murray for leading this important 
resolution. No Republican should block it. It should be a no-brainer to 
say people who attack police don't deserves pardons.
  By handing out these pardons to convicted criminals, President Trump 
is effectively saying: You want to attack our brave police officers? 
That is OK.
  How are these pardons supposed to make Americans better off? How does 
pardoning lawless rioters help people with affording groceries or 
paying the rent or paying for medications? Pardoning rioters is not 
what Americans want the President to be prioritizing, even though it 
was one of his first acts. They want to see answers to the problems 
that impact them: inflation, good-paying jobs, and a better future.
  Our Capitol Police, meanwhile, deserve nothing less than our full and 
steadfast support for everything they do to keep us safe every single 
day. The least--the very least--we can do for them as Senators is 
declare that those convicted of attacking Capitol Police officers do 
not--do not--deserve a Presidential pardon.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). The Senator from Hawaii.


                  Nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, 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.
  Now, if saying crazy things doesn't seem to be disqualifying for a 
nominee these days, I understand, but it is not just that he said crazy 
things or holds deranged views; it is that he has acted on them--it is 
that he has acted on them.
  I want everybody to listen to exactly what happened in Samoa. Not 20 
years ago, not 10 years ago, but in 2019, while he was chairman of an 
anti-vaccine group, he flew to Samoa because he sensed an opportunity 
to exploit people's hesitation about taking the measles vaccine. People 
were understandably worried after an accident involving improperly 
prepared vaccines killed two babies. It was a tragedy, and it was a 
costly mistake but not a reason to abandon the measles vaccine 
altogether.
  But RFK sought to make people more afraid. He discouraged people from 
taking the vaccine because he wanted to run a ``natural experiment'' to 
see how people fared against the disease without protection. To see how 
people fared against the disease without protection? This guy is up for 
HHS, Health and Human Services? This guy just wants to see what would 
happen if we didn't give people the lifesaving protection that they 
need? He literally flew to the other side of the planet to turn 
people's fears into a data-collection opportunity.
  For some context here, Samoa is a small country and had a population 
of around 200,000 people at the time. People knew each other, and word 
got around fast that Kennedy was in town saying a thing. So it was no 
small thing that this man from America with the last name ``Kennedy,'' 
pretending to be a health expert, was there peddling all kinds of lies 
to prevent people from getting a lifesaving vaccine, and those lies 
spread fast. Vaccination rates plummeted, and within 5 months, Samoa 
had a measles outbreak. Some 5,700 people were infected with the

[[Page S406]]

measles. Eighty-three people died; almost all of them were children. 
That was the conclusion of Mr. Kennedy's natural experiment--children 
died.
  This isn't some ancient history I am digging up here; this was less 
than 6 years ago. It is alarmingly reminiscent of one of the darkest 
chapters in our country's history--the Tuskegee experiment.
  For 40 years, beginning in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service ran 
an experiment with 600 Black men in Alabama. The majority of them had 
syphilis, and the objective was to ``observe the disease process.'' So 
even when penicillin became the standard of care in 1947, the men who 
needed that treatment, who could have been given lifesaving care, were 
denied penicillin. Researchers did nothing as men died and they went 
blind because they wanted to see how the disease would develop--a 
natural experiment.
  It took a young doctor, not long out of medical school, who read 
about the study in a medical journal and couldn't believe his eyes. He 
could not understand how the U.S. Government had come to view these 
poor sharecroppers as expendable, as subhuman. He thought about the 
Hippocratic oath that he and every other doctor like him had sworn to. 
What happened to ``First do no harm''?
  And so not knowing what else to do but knowing he was risking a whole 
lot by speaking out, he wrote to the study's authors, and I want to 
read a bit of what he wrote:

       I am utterly astounded by the fact that physicians allow 
     patients with a potentially fatal disease to remain untreated 
     when effective therapy is available. I assume you feel that 
     the information which is extracted from observation of this 
     untreated group is worth their sacrifice. If this is the 
     case, then I suggest the United States Public Health Service 
     and those physicians associated with it in this study need to 
     reevaluate their moral judgments in this regard.

  The man who wrote that letter and was the first--and for a long time, 
the only--person to sound the alarm about the depravity of the Tuskegee 
experiment was my dad, Dr. Irv Schatz. It is one of the many reasons 
that he is my hero.
  But I never thought--I never thought--that 60 years later, I would be 
standing in the very body that passed legislation in response to that 
shameful period arguing against confirming someone who wants to 
replicate that experiment at scale.
  That is what RFK, Jr., wants to do. He wants to use Americans as lab 
rats in a national experiment, and if it means bringing back the 
measles or the mumps or rubella or polio, so be it. That is the cost of 
doing business, as he sees it.
  I understand my Republican colleagues are facing a lot of pressure 
from within. It is a new administration, and you want to give them 
deference; an Executive, generally speaking, gets to have their team. 
But this nomination is not actually like the others. Even if you don't 
want to take Mr. Kennedy's words so literally--maybe you think he is 
just wondering aloud--look at his actions. Look at what he has done. 
Time and time again, he has abandoned every physician's first 
principle: Do no harm.

       I shall do by my patients as I would be done by . . . and 
     shall minimize suffering whenever a cure cannot be obtained.

  That is the part of the oath that every medical student takes at 
graduation before they can practice. Yet the person nominated to lead 
the country's entire health system has consistently done the exact 
opposite. He has caused disease. He has caused pain. He has caused 
death.
  And so the vote we are going to be taking on this nominee is much 
more than your party or mine. It is life or death. And I promise you, 
if this person is confirmed, it will not age well--not in a Republican 
primary, not in a Democratic primary, not in your family, not in your 
community. Nowhere will an RFK ``aye'' vote age well. This person is 
going to cause disease across the United States.
  I urge a ``no'' vote.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.