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The Brian Lehrer Show

RFK's 'Hands Off' Approach To Bird Flu

The Brian Lehrer Show

WNYC

York, News, Politics, Radio, Arts, News Commentary, Public, Lerer, Media, Wnyc, Bryan, Daily News, New, Nyc, Npr

4.61.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Apoorva Mandavilli, reporter for The New York Times, focusing on science and global health, discusses the government's approach to Bird Flu.

Transcript

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0:00.0

It's the Brian Larrow Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. One of the things we've

0:15.8

committed to doing on this show during Trump's first 100 days is a health and climate Tuesdays section of the show.

0:22.8

This builds on and expands the climate story of the week that we had been doing on Tuesdays

0:27.9

the last two years. Our thinking right now is that there are so many headlines coming from the

0:32.5

new administration and often health and climate stories fall under the radar.

0:40.8

So we'll start today's Health and Climate Section with Health.

0:45.5

A look at H5N1, colloquially known as Bird Flu,

0:47.5

and RFK's position on it.

0:50.7

Then on climate, we'll look at the court order ruling last week that could bankrupt Greenpeace and its implications for any kind of protest.

0:55.6

But on bird flu, with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at the helm of our country's health agencies,

1:01.2

he is tasked with a job of quelling the disease that's killed millions of birds and infected

1:07.3

some humans along the way, generally known as bird flu.

1:11.8

A few weeks ago, RFK Jr. sat down with Fox News as Sean Hannity

1:16.0

at a stake-and-shake in Florida to talk about what he's doing to curb bird flu infection.

1:22.0

Here's a minute of that conversation, and spoiler alert, RFK opposes vaccines.

1:31.0

All of my agencies have advised against vaccination of birds. Because if you vaccinate with a leaky vaccine, in other words, a vaccine that does not provide

1:37.3

sterilizing immunity, that does not absolutely protect against the disease, you turn those

1:43.3

flocks into mutation factories. They're

1:47.0

generating, they're teaching the organism how to mutate. And it's much, it destabilized,

1:54.0

and it's much more likely to jump to animals if you do that. So all my agency has from

2:00.0

NIH CDC and FDA had all said we should not be

2:03.6

vaccinating as dangerous for human beings to vaccinate the birds. The question is, should you

...

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