WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s pick to oversee public health emergency and disaster preparedness and response has questioned the use of the hepatitis B vaccine in infants and debunked the vaccine’s link to autism, in past comments reviewed by STAT.
The comments by Sean Kaufman, the nominee for assistant secretary for preparedness and response, are part of an undercurrent of vaccine skepticism among some senior Department of Health and Human Services officials, from Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. down, despite efforts by White House officials to shift the conversation away from vaccines.
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It could set up a conflict with Senate health leader Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), who will chair Kaufman’s confirmation hearing next week. Cassidy has opposed some of the more aggressive vaccine policy changes heralded by Kennedy, including opposing delays in hepatitis B vaccinations, citing his experience as a liver doctor treating hepatitis B patients.
But Cassidy supported Kennedy’s confirmation despite Kennedy’s obvious discomfort with vaccine skepticism. Cassidy lost re-election in May after Presidents Kennedy and Trump publicly accused him of interfering with the Make America Healthy Again agenda.
Kaufman’s hearing will be jointly attended by Erika Schwartz, a nominee to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and will be the first time Cassidy has been nominated as an HHS candidate since Kaufman’s defeat. Cassidy, the White House and Kaufman did not respond to requests for comment.
If Kaufman, a co-founder of a biosafety consulting firm, is confirmed, he would oversee the nation’s response to the public health crisis, including vaccines and personal protective equipment.
In a now-deleted LinkedIn post from May 2025, Kaufman told readers that if you call yourself an “anti-vaxxer,” I’ll have to call you a pedophile, then claimed he was against hepatitis B vaccinations for infants.
“And before you dismiss all this as ‘anti-vaxxer nonsense,’ think about autism,” he wrote. He went on to claim that the hepatitis B vaccine may be linked to the rise in autism cases.
Decades of research have found no link between vaccines and autism prevalence.
Kaufman also raised the question of whether vaccines are linked to many health problems, using rhetoric similar to that of Kennedy and others in the vaccine skeptic movement.
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“Questions surrounding the safety of vaccines, whether recombinant or mRNA platforms, are not just hypothetical concerns; they are serious issues that require honest investigation,” he said in a 2025 LinkedIn post. “We have an obligation to the public, especially those who may have been unintentionally harmed, to move beyond negative rhetoric and engage in transparent, science-based discussions. Significant increases in autism, allergies, and other health problems are not mere coincidences or the result of better detection. They are signs that deserve our full attention.”
He similarly questioned hepatitis B vaccination for infants in a May 2025 video, downplaying the risk of the virus as limited to people who engage in risky sex or share needles. Although hepatitis B is primarily transmitted through certain risky behaviors, public health experts say infants can be infected in other ways, and vaccinating newborns helps reduce mother-to-child transmission.
The progressive group Protect Our Care called on Cassidy to block Kaufman’s confirmation.
“There is something very dangerous here, allowing science deniers like Mr. Kaufman to oversee the emergency supply of vaccines to the nation,” the group’s president, Brad Woodhouse, said in a statement.
Kaufman also called the offer of an mRNA coronavirus vaccine “reckless” and questioned its safety and effectiveness. He praised President Kennedy’s efforts to rescind universal recommendations for coronavirus vaccines. “I don’t think it should have been (recommended) in the first place,” he said.
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In separate LinkedIn posts from two and three years ago that are still public, Kaufman defended individuals who claim they were fired from their jobs for refusing to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations (Kaufman previously reportedly served as an expert witness in a lawsuit against vaccine mandates) and said he was censored for touting the “benefits of natural immunity.”
In one post, he referenced COVID-19 vaccinations, describing himself as a “father of three who would rather die than one of his children to receive a shot where the risks far outweigh the benefits.”
Last year, a panel of vaccine experts handpicked by President Kennedy voted to recommend that most parents delay vaccinating their children with the hepatitis B vaccine, prompting a backlash from public health experts who said the consequences could be devastating and fatal.
That recommendation is currently on hold as challenges to President Kennedy’s vaccine policy move through federal court. The committee has also raised questions about the safety of mRNA coronavirus vaccines, and President Kennedy has raised millions of dollars in funding for the technology.
