Bill Cassidy

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy pressed President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Food and Drug Administration to stand up for vaccines in a hearing Thursday, and got some of what he wanted from her.

Dr. Heidi Overton, a certified preventive care physician, contradicted President Donald Trump’s statements that the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is potentially “quite lethal” in a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, which is considering her nomination to run the FDA. She said the MMR vaccination “is our best tool” to combat the recent surge in measles cases.

But Overton refused to criticize the president’s statements – not just on vaccines, but on issues like whether Tylenol could cause autism. She also wouldn’t say if she believed that healthcare access is a human right; if the nation’s consumers are paying the lowest prices in the world for prescription drugs, as Trump as claimed, despite evidence to the contrary; or if birth control amounted to abortion, again as the president has said.

“This Committee needs to know whether you will be radically honest. That you will use your authority to stand up for sound science and protect children’s health,” Cassidy said. “You will also need to ensure that uninformed ideologies do not influence FDA’s decision on whether to approve individual products, even if the president is pressuring.”

After the hearing, Cassidy wouldn’t say if Overton adequately addressed his concerns.

Since losing in the May 16 closed GOP primary to Trump-backed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, R-Baton Rouge, Cassidy has become freer with his criticisms of the president and his allies.

Questions over vaccines

As the White House deputy assistant for domestic policy, Overton drafted the executive order that changed the schedule children receive the single dose vaccination and allowed for the inoculations to be broken up into several sticks.

She was standing behind Trump when the president said the MMR vaccine possibly is “quite lethal.”

“The risk is in being unvaccinated,” Cassidy said. “To say that the vaccine is ‘quite lethal’ is going to discourage people from being vaccinated when the scientific evidence says that getting vaccinated practically eliminates the risk of getting measles, of being hospitalized, transmitting the infection to other people and perhaps themselves dying, perhaps someone else dying. That’s what the scientific evidence shows.”

Overton said her job is to present to the president the best version of the policy he seeks.

When asked by Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire, if Trump was incorrect in his public views about the dangers of the MMR vaccine, Overton answered, “the president wants the best outcomes.”

Hassan cut her off. “I wish it wasn’t so difficult for members of the administration to say the president was wrong.”

The committee will vote at a future hearing on whether to advance Overton and other health agency nominees to the full Senate for confirmation.

Before his political career, Cassidy had been a liver doctor in the Louisiana charity hospital system and published research papers in medical journals on the efficacy of certain vaccines.

Cassidy sought assurances from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine skeptic, that, in return for his support, the nation’s vaccination policies would not change arbitrarily. Soon after Kennedy became secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, he rolled back those very policies.

Cassidy was one of a handful of Republican senators who voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges stemming from MAGA supporters rioting at the U.S. Capitol in an effort to sidetrack the official congressional declaration that Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election.