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During a contentious Senate Finance Committee hearing on September 4, 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made explosive claims, asserting that mRNA vaccines—including common COVID-19 jabs from Pfizer and Moderna—are responsible for fatalities. This testimony quickly escalated into a heated exchange, marking a significant moment in the ongoing public health debate surrounding vaccine safety and government oversight.
Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) pressed Secretary Kennedy on his controversial decision to dismiss the entire vaccine advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), replacing them with his own selections. Bennet specifically highlighted a public statement from one of Kennedy’s new appointees, Dr. Retsef Levy, who had written that “evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm, including death, especially among young people.” Kennedy, long associated with anti-vaccination views, confirmed his agreement with Levy’s assertion, despite claiming unawareness of the specific statement itself.
Dr. Levy, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former Israeli military intelligence official, notably lacks a medical degree. His January 2023 post on X (formerly Twitter) echoed similar concerns, calling for an immediate halt to mRNA vaccine administration due to alleged serious harms, including death. A petition for his removal from the advisory committee is currently circulating, underscoring the controversy.
Throughout the Finance Committee hearing, Kennedy’s voice was notably raspy and labored, with audible heavy breathing captured by microphones, as observed by viewers. His exchanges were often testy, not only with Democratic senators but also with Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who played a crucial role in Kennedy’s confirmation as HHS Secretary. Senator Cassidy challenged Kennedy on a previous statement, saying, “You just told Sen. Bennet that the Covid vaccine killed more people than Covid.” Kennedy vehemently denied this, stating, “I did not say that.”
Senator Cassidy further raised concerns about restricted access to COVID-19 vaccines, pointing out that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an agency under HHS, has limited annual booster shots primarily to individuals over 65 or those with specific medical conditions. Cassidy concluded that this effectively “denied people vaccines,” a claim Kennedy swiftly refuted as “wrong.”
The most astonishing exchanges came during questioning from Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), who asked if Kennedy acknowledged the widely accepted figure of over a million American COVID-19 deaths—a milestone reached in May 2022 according to Johns Hopkins University data. Kennedy’s response was a startling admission: “I don’t know how many died,” attributing the uncertainty to “so much data chaos coming out of the CDC.” A visibly stunned Senator Warner then inquired if Kennedy believed the vaccine had any role in preventing additional deaths. Kennedy sidestepped, stating, “I would like to see the data and talk about the data.” Warner concluded with a scathing critique: “The secretary of Health and Human Services doesn’t know how many Americans died from Covid, know if the vaccine helped prevent any deaths, and you are sitting as secretary of Health and Human Services? How can you be that ignorant?”