The Maryland senator confronted Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on his false medical claims during his confirmation hearing to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks‘ questioning of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President Donald Trump‘s nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has gone viral online after the Democrat confronted him on his past statements about vaccines and Black Americans.
“We should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that’s given to whites because their immune system is better than ours,” said Kennedy during a 2021 interview, which Alsobrooks read aloud during Thursday’s confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
When asked what he meant by the remarks, which harken back to racist medical tropes that suggest Black people are racially or biologically different than others, Kennedy — who has pushed several medical conspiracies throughout his advocacy career — responded, “There’s a series of studies, I think most of them by Poland, that show that to particular antigens that Blacks have a much stronger reaction. There’s differences in reaction to different products by different races.”
Senator Alsobrooks, who is Black, then asked Kennedy, by his theory, “What different vaccine schedule would you say I should have received?”
When Kennedy continued, he quoted the so-called Poland “article” suggesting Black Americans “need fewer antigens,” Alsobrooks interjected, telling the HHS nominee, “With all due respect, that is so dangerous.” She added, “I will be voting against your nomination because your views are dangerous to our state and to our country.”
Kennedy has a history of pushing false medical claims, particularly as it relates to COVID-19. As a presidential candidate in 2023, Kennedy falsely claimed that the COVID-19 virus was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and spare Jews and Chinese people. Researchers, doctors and even his own sister quickly slammed the remarks at the time.
COVID-19 disproportionately affected Black, Hispanic and other ethnic groups in the United States, but health experts have explained that social determinants, such as health care access and some pre-existing illnesses led to different recovery outcomes, not a specific or deliberate genetic virus composition.
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