Schatz: Proposed HHS Testing Plan To Withhold Vaccines From Select Kids, Families Risks Lives, Mirrors Immoral Tuskegee Experiment

WASHINGTON – Following reports that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., would radically change testing vaccines by introducing placebo testing, including for well-researched diseases like measles and polio, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) spoke out on the Senate floor, warning that the new move would risk lives and threaten public health.

In his remarks, Schatz compared the new HHS plan to the unethical Tuskegee Experiment which began in 1932 by the U.S. Public Health Service. The study withheld treatment from hundreds of African American men to observe the effects of the disease. The first person to raise the alarm about the cruelty of the experiment in 1965 was Schatz’s father, Dr. Irv Schatz.

“It means that they would take a bunch of kids, divide them into two groups, and give some of the kids the vaccine for rubella and mumps or polio, and then they would take the other half and give them a placebo – dummy vaccine that doesn't work. It’s not supposed to work,” said Senator Schatz. “Let me tell you something about my father. My father was the only doctor on the record for the first couple of years after the Tuskegee Experiments on African American men, in which they withheld lifesaving medicine from hundreds of African American men, believing that they were expendable, to ‘observe the disease process.’ What they are contemplating – and I don't know how serious this is – but what they're contemplating is that at scale with children.”

Schatz has repeatedly warned against Secretary Kennedy’s views and record, highlighting his pivotal role in causing a measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019, which resulted in over 5,700 people getting infected and 83 people – mostly young children – dying.

The full text of his remarks can be found below. Video is available here.

Yesterday, the Health Secretary, RFK Jr., announced that the Department would subject all new vaccines, including vaccines for children and vaccines for well-researched diseases like measles and polio to placebo testing.

So what does that mean? It means that they would take a bunch of kids, divide them into two groups, and give some of the kids the vaccine for rubella and mumps or polio, and then they would take the other half and give them a placebo. A dummy vaccine that doesn't work. It's not supposed to work. And then they would study how the kids fared, to let the disease process continue. Let me tell you something about my father. My father was the only doctor on the record for the first couple of years after the Tuskegee experiments on African American men, in which they withheld lifesaving medicine from hundreds of African American men, believing that they were expendable, to “observe the disease process.” What they are contemplating –and I don't know how serious this is – but what they're contemplating is that at scale with children.

I am hoping that the department clarifies today that's not what they meant. That is fake news. But as of now, they are contemplating population wide experiments on children. To see how the disease process progresses. There should be a hundred United States senators opposed to that, and I pray that they back off of this by the end of the day.

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