Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a former member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s performance at a Senate hearing this week. In an interview with MSNBC’s Katy Tur, Offit said Kennedy represents “a very small percentage of parents” as well as people who lack trust in public health agencies such as the CDC or the FDA. “I really fear for the health of America’s children with him as the principal public health officer,” Offit said in the interview.

KATY TUR, MSNBC: Joining us now is the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Dr. Paul Offit. He’s a former member of the panel of independent experts who advise the FDA on vaccines. Does it surprise you, doctor, that a majority of Trump voters also believe in vaccines? DR. PAUL OFFIT: Not at all. I think most parents believe in vaccines, whether it’s Republican or Democrat. That’s always been true. I think what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. does is he represents a very small percentage of parents and has for two decades. Unfortunately, he’s now in a policy position. So people would assume that what he’s asking for is what most parents want. But it’s simply not true. It’s not even what most Republican parents want. KATY TUR: So why have somebody like RFK Jr., who has expressed deep skepticism, did so again yesterday about vaccines, why have him as the head of HHS? If a majority of your voters believe in it? DR. PAUL OFFIT:Because I think what happened in the first two years of the COVID pandemic is that people started to lack trust, have a lack of trust in agencies like the CDC or the FDA, the National Institutes of Health. And he represents that. He represents basically kind of this libertarian left hook that we leaned into the first two years of the pandemic. And now we see him as someone who has disdain for the agency that he heads. And we’re all going to suffer that… KATY TUR: What did you make of yesterday’s hearing? DR. PAUL OFFIT: He’s hard to listen to. He has for 20 years said that no vaccine is beneficial. He has said that we have simply taken vaccines and with vaccination, we’ve simply eliminated or lessened infections. He’s at the price of causing chronic disease. He said on a podcast that the polio vaccine killed many, many more people than it saved. He is a virulent anti-vaccine activist. He is exactly who he’s been for 20 years. And so we’re getting that now. We’re getting his point of view, which is that he’s going to make vaccines less available, less affordable and more feared. I really fear for the health of America’s children with him as the principal public health officer. KATY TUR: So there’s a board meeting on vaccines at HHS in a couple of weeks. And the expectation could be that they’re going to cast more doubt on the vaccine schedule, perhaps, that children get as they go through adolescence. If that happens, what is it going to mean for pediatricians? What’s it going to mean for people who want their insurance company to pay for vaccines? What’s the ripple effect? DR. PAUL OFFIT: Well, so the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices will then meet in September. He has fired the 17 people who were part of that committee, who had the expertise and experience to give us good advice and replace them with people who don’t have that expertise or experience. As a consequence, medical and scientific societies and communities no longer trust the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices and, by extension, no longer trust the CDC. So in many ways, whatever they say is largely going to be ignored. And other groups like these consortiums in the Northeast or the West that are being put together to try and at least provide good information, which now we assume is not going to be coming out of the ACIP, it’s too bad because that was a wonderful committee that gave us good advice. And he’s replacing with people who are like him in that they’re science-averse and basically anti-vaccine. KATY TUR: So there is that doubt out there that there’s that loss of trust. Some of it came from COVID and a feeling that people were told to mask with cloth masks that weren’t working. They didn’t like the lockdowns. They thought the school lockdowns had gone on for way too long, that the teachers’ unions had more power than the health professionals did. So there is a lack of trust that is pervasive among some groups. How do you talk to somebody who no longer trusts the health establishment? How do you address their issues and the concerns they might have? Some might be valid. And then say, but please listen to us on vaccines. How do you do that? DR. PAUL OFFIT: I think COVID was a learning experience. And I think it’s true. I think we closed schools for far too long. I think we shuttered businesses for far too long. I think we weren’t clear that this vaccine was designed to keep people out of the hospital and not prevent mild or moderate illness. I think by firing people from work who, for example, had been naturally infected was not fair. So I think what we have to do is sit down, take a step back, and listen to what people are upset about, and try and explain how we’re going to try and do the best we can to get good information out there. I think the biggest mistake we made, actually, in those first two years is we didn’t include the public in those decisions. We didn’t include the business community when we were shutting down business. We didn’t include everybody from the school community, especially children who had special needs. They especially suffered during all this. And I think that was a mistake. We need to include the public when we make these decisions. KATY TUR: What about just a mea culpa from health professionals or health experts? We haven’t gotten that. DR. PAUL OFFIT: I think you’re right. I mean, we do learn as we go. And the nature of science is you learn as you go. So, for example, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was approved in February of 2021 based on tens of thousands of people who’ve been immunized. And then we found out that that vaccine could be a rare cause of clotting, including clotting of the brain, including fatal clotting of the brain. So, eventually, that vaccine was removed from the market. I think people see that, and they think these people just don’t know what they’re doing. But I think we need to explain the process and also explain how we learn as we go. And sometimes that learning curve can have a huge place. KATY TUR: Yeah, science is an evolution, especially when you’re trying to figure it out in the moment during a pandemic. I know, but in a journalist, everyone knows that when you say, I was wrong, I’m sorry I was wrong, or I’m not quite sure, you do gain back quite a bit of trust. So, lessons learned, I guess.

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