By Dan Levine
Aug 25 (Reuters) – A group of U.S. senators said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent explanation for how he disposed of a financial stake in litigation involving Merck’s Gardasil vaccine conflicts with earlier answers he gave in written testimony and federal ethics filings, a letter reviewed by Reuters shows.
The letter, sent on Monday by four Democratic senators, notes that Merck earlier this year agreed to pay $50 million to settle litigation over Gardasil, which prevents cancers caused by the human papillomavirus.
Before becoming health secretary last year, Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, was an attorney of record in some of the cases. As health secretary, Kennedy oversees multiple health agencies that regulate and pay for vaccines.
After his nomination by Trump, Kennedy initially said he intended to keep a 10% fee of any settlement involving Gardasil cases he referred to the Wisner Baum law firm, which has represented dozens of plaintiffs. Met with concerns from Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other lawmakers during the confirmation process, Kennedy then said he would hand over his financial interest in vaccine litigation to a son.
Last month, the senators asked whether Kennedy’s son received the health secretary’s share of the Gardasil fees, and if so, how much money that represents. They wanted answers to why Kennedy did not commit to recuse himself from U.S. health agency decisions involving Gardasil, or other policymaking around vaccine litigation.
In response, Kennedy said in a social media post earlier this month that neither he nor anyone else in his family have “received a penny” from the Gardasil settlement. Before taking office, Kennedy said he “relinquished any interest in potential Gardasil fees back to the Wisner Baum law firm.”
Kennedy also accused Warren, along with media outlets including Reuters, of “inventing lies” to besmirch him for standing up to the pharmaceutical industry.
In the letter on Monday, Warren and three other lawmakers pointed to Kennedy’s ethics filings and written answers provided to the Senate Finance Committee last year, in which the secretary said he would hand any Gardasil fees to his son. The senators’ staff could find no subsequent filings with different information, the letter said.
Kennedy’s recent statement, the letter said, appears to indicate the information he previously provided “is no longer accurate and suggests that you have either modified your ethics agreement or strayed from it altogether.”
An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When asked last month about the prior letter from lawmakers, an HHS spokesperson initially did not comment and then later pointed to Kennedy’s social media posting.
The senators asked Kennedy on Monday to explain why he certified in an ethics form that he would transfer his stake to a family member, if that had not happened.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends Gardasil as a routine immunization for 11- and 12-year-olds to prevent cervical and other HPV-linked cancers.
Earlier this year, the CDC attempted to change its guidance and said U.S. children should receive a single dose of HPV vaccine, rather than the two-dose course marketed by Merck and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A federal judge blocked that move.
(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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