The United States Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was scheduled to hold its second hearing on vaccines on Tuesday.
The hearing was called “Voices of the Vaccine Injured.” Seven witnesses were expected to testify, five of whom claimed an FDA-approved vaccine hurt them or a loved one.
U.S. Sen. Ricard Blumenthal (D-CT) is a member of the committee.
“You rarely hear a United States senator saying, I hope nothing comes of this hearing,” Blumenthal said. “I hope people don't pay attention. Because it isn't deserving of credibility and attention.”
Blumenthal hosted a call with four pro-vaccine advocates before the hearing.
One of them was Jamie Schanbaum, who survived meningitis in college. She wasn’t vaccinated and lost both legs below the knee as well as all of her fingers during a lengthy hospital stay while fighting the illness.
Schanbaum said other Americans could suffer a similar fate because of vaccine skepticism.
“When you're in a situation like mine, there's very little that a hospital can do, even with the advanced medical technology that's out there, which is why we encourage vaccines,” Schanbaum said.
Last month, Health and Human Services Commissioner Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced everyone on the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel. He cited low trust in the system responsible for approving vaccines. Several of the new panel members are vaccine skeptics.
“The U.S. faces a crisis of public trust,” Kennedy said in an op-ed posted in the Wall Street Journal last month. “Whether toward health agencies, pharmaceutical companies, or vaccines themselves, public confidence is waning. Some would try to explain this away by blaming misinformation or anti-science attitudes. To do so, however, ignores a history of conflicts of interest, persecution of dissidents, a lack of curiosity, and skewed science that has plagued the vaccine regulatory apparatus for decades.”
