President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration faced pointed questioning from senators Thursday over the administration’s overhaul of childhood vaccine recommendations, including its proposal to separate the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into three shots. Heidi Overton, a physician and White House domestic policy adviser, was pressed on why she had stood alongside Trump when he signed an August executive order calling for separate MMR vaccinations and broader changes to the childhood vaccine schedule. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the committee chairman and a physician who has been publicly critical of the administration's approach to vaccines, demanded to know whether Overton would put scientific standards ahead of the president’s claims about vaccines.
He had previously called Overton’s involvement in the MMR order “almost disqualifying." "Dr. Overton, this Committee needs to know whether you will be radically honest," he told Overton. "That you will use your authority to stand up for sound science and protect children’s health.
That you will unequivocally say that the MMR vaccine is safe and not lethal. 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." Cassidy asked Overton what scientific evidence she had personally reviewed showing that separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines would be safer or more effective than the existing combined MMR vaccine. While Overton did not cite specific evidence, she explained that her White House role was to coordinate an interagency process, gather input from agency experts, and present options to Trump.
The Republican senator then turned to the president’s own description of the MMR vaccine. Trump had suggested at the August signing ceremony that the combined shot could be “quite lethal.” Cassidy pressed Overton on whether she would reject that characterization. "The President called the MMR vaccine 'quite lethal.' Talk about zero scientific evidence," he told Overton at Thursday’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, "And this comes as unvaccinated Americans are being hospitalized and even dying of measles." “The MMR vaccine is safe and effective,” Overton said, later adding that it was “not lethal.” Cassidy’s questioning went beyond the safety of MMR.
He also asked what Overton would do if Trump directed her to take an action that conflicted with the FDA’s statutory responsibilities. Overton said she would “give him my best advice” and “follow the statutory requirements for the role of FDA commissioner regarding individual product determinations for safety and efficacy.” The hearing came as the United States is experiencing its largest measles outbreak in decades. It also underscored the central question of Overton’s nomination: whether she would put the FDA’s scientific and statutory responsibilities ahead of the policy priorities of the White House she has helped advise.
In January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adopted a revised childhood immunization framework that divided vaccines into three categories: vaccines recommended for all children, vaccines recommended for certain high-risk groups, and vaccines subject to shared clinical decision-making between patients and clinicians. The first category includes protection against 11 diseases: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, Hib, pneumococcal disease, HPV and chickenpox. In August, Trump signed an executive order that went further.
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