‘Utterly Ridiculous!’ C-SPAN Caller Unleashes on Former CDC Chief Over Pushing Childhood Vaccines

Dr. Richard Besser, who served as the CDC’s acting director in 2009, was harshly criticized by a C-SPAN caller on Thursday who described his support for childhood vaccines as “utterly ridiculous.”

The caller, identified as “Jamie” from Garden City, Missouri, told Besser, who served under former President Barack Obama, “In the 1960s, there was, like, five to eight immunizations given to our children, and now there’s 80-some, and I’m totally against it. You say that, ‘Well, you know, autism, we just know more about it,’ and all this other stuff, but this is utterly ridiculous!”

The caller went on to cite some personal stories, including an example of her “newborn” grandchild receiving a Hepatitis B vaccine and subsequently suffering an illness that required her to be hospitalized. She also spoke of her grandson, who passed away from leukemia, before insisting that “childhood cancer” is linked to immunizations.

“You act like there’s nothing wrong,” the caller continued. “I grew up in the 60s, and I’m fine, but our children are sick.”

She went on to express support for President Donald Trump’s Monday executive order, which overhauled federal childhood vaccine recommendations by reducing the number of vaccines broadly recommended for all children, encouraging shots to be spread across separate medical appointments, and calling for the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to eventually be split into three individual shots.

Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have repeatedly promoted claims about vaccines that are not supported by scientific evidence, particularly the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. Trump even acknowledged Monday that he had no evidence for his claim that the combined MMR vaccine could be “quite lethal. Medical experts have maintained that the shot is safe and effective, and there is likewise no evidence that routine childhood vaccines cause leukemia or other childhood cancers.

Besser responded to the caller on Thursday, “I’m very sorry for your loss,” before explaining that childhood vaccinations are, in part, meant to protect kids like her grandson who suffered from leukemia, as their immune systems are weaker.

“Back in the 1960s,” he added, “it was not at all uncommon to see children come into the emergency room with meningitis, lose their hearing, go blind, and die. That is no longer the case in America, because we’ve developed vaccines.”

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

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