In a sharp break with his past rhetoric, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered a qualified embrace of the measles vaccine Thursday, as President Donald Trump named a new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention whose views on vaccination are more conventional than Kennedy’s.

In back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill, Kennedy testified that the measles vaccine is safe and effective “for most people” and agreed it was safer than getting measles. Under questioning, he also allowed that the vaccine might have saved the lives of two unvaccinated children who died of measles in Texas earlier this year.

His comments, while carefully couched, stand in stark contrast to his previous statements about vaccination. Coupled with Trump’s announcement of Erica Schwartz, a deputy surgeon general in his first administration, as his new pick for CDC director, they provided the latest evidence yet that Kennedy is trying to publicly put his efforts to overhaul American vaccine policy behind him.

When asked during his confirmation hearings if he could “assure mothers, unequivocally, that the measles and hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism?” he said he would do so only “if the data showed” that the assertion was true. The scientific consensus is that there is no link between the measles vaccine and autism. Appearing Thursday on Capitol Hill for the first of seven hearings on Trump’s budget, Kennedy defended the CDC’s removal of a recommendation that all newborns get the hepatitis B vaccine.

Getting CDC ‘Back on Track’

Kennedy’s testimony marked his first before Congress since September, just after he pushed out the CDC’s former director, Susan Monarez, less than a month after she was confirmed. The agency is officially leaderless, but is being managed by Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health.

Shortly before Trump announced the nomination of Schwartz along with three other new CDC leaders, Kennedy shared the news, though he did not name names.

“We’re bringing in an extraordinary team and, you know, the team has been leaked, and it’s gotten applause from both Republicans and Democrats,” he said. “I think this new team is really going to be able to revolutionize CDC and get it back on track.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Dani Blum/Demetrius Freeman

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