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Trump’s surgeon general nominee grilled over stances on vaccines and autism

Shrai Popat

Casey Means, Donald Trump’s controversial nominee for US surgeon general, is answering questions before lawmakers on the Senate committee for health, labor and pensions today. The surgeon general serves as the nation’s top doctor, responsible for disseminating the latest public health guidance.

Means, who has a medical degree but is not board-certified, and does not have an active medical license, declined to give a simple yes-or-no answer when the committee chair, Republican senator Bill Cassidy, pressed her on whether, if confirmed, she would encourage parents to vaccinate their children with routine shots such as the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. She said:

I’m supportive of vaccination. I do believe that each patient, mother, parent, needs to have a conversation with their pediatrician about any medication they’re putting in their body and their children’s bodies.

When Cassidy asked whether she would state her position more clearly if confirmed, she replied: “I’m not an individual’s doctor, and every individual needs to talk to their doctor before putting a medication in their body.”

Her comments come as measles outbreaks continue across the country, with South Carolina experiencing the worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years amid declining childhood immunization rates.

In response, Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, urged Americans to “take the vaccine, please” earlier this month. In an interview with CNN, Oz issued a rare plea from the Trump administration to insist upon inoculation.

Not all illnesses are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses. But measles is one you should get your vaccine.

While Means insisted that anti-vaccine rhetoric “has never been a part” of her message and said she was “not here to complicate the issue on vaccines”, she repeatedly sidestepped direct questions from lawmakers about whether vaccines cause autism – a theory long discredited by the scientific community and frequently promoted by Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

“The reality is that we have an autism crisis that’s increasing, and this is devastating to many families, and we do not know as a medical community what causes autism,” she said, while acknowledging that there is an overwhelming body of evidence refuting claims that vaccines cause the condition. “I also think that science is never settled, and I think that the effort to look at comprehensive, cumulative exposures into what is causing autism is important.”