A high-profile Senate hearing on the National Institutes of Health on Tuesday became a flashpoint in the political debate over vaccines.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pressed Dr. Jay Bhattacharya multiple times during the hearing on whether the NIH director has showed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the scientific evidence that vaccines don’t cause autism.
The committee had invited Bhattacharya to testify on modernizing the NIH, but the director was asked by Sanders and Democrats to answer for the Trump administration’s shifts in vaccine policy that departed from decades of scientific guidance. Bhattacharya ...