Former New York City mayor and Democrat presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg assailed the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run Health and Human Services, calling the choice "beyond dangerous" and "medical malpractice."
Bloomberg made the comments at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg American Health Summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, The Hill reported.
"If the President-elect doesn't reconsider the nomination, the Senate has a duty to our whole country, but especially to our children, to vote no," Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg noted Kennedy's stance against the COVID-19 vaccine.
"If RFK Jr. had been in office during Trump's first term, would Operation Warp Speed have even happened?" Bloomberg said about the federal effort under then-President Donald Trump that supported the public-private partnership to accelerate development of the COVID-19 vaccine.
"And if it did, how long would the vaccines have been delayed? How many fewer people would have gotten the shot? How many more people would have died?"
Kennedy has promoted claims about vaccines that contradict the consensus of scientists. Kennedy insists he is not anti-vaccine and claims he has never told the public to avoid vaccination. But he has repeatedly made his opposition to vaccines clear.
He said on a podcast "there's no vaccine that is safe and effective" and has urged people to resist Centers for Disease Control guidelines on when children should get vaccinated. The CDC is one of the agencies Kennedy would oversee as HHS secretary.
"Parents who have been swayed by vaccines skepticism love their children and want to protect them, and we need leaders who will help them do that, not conspiracy theorists who will scare them into decisions that will put their children at risk of disease and even death," Bloomberg said.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.