Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) last week urged the U.S. health secretary to join him in endorsing a common childhood vaccine - his latest effort to cajole Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to perform what many consider a basic public health service.

“I want to work together to stop pertussis,” Cassidy wrote in an open letter, noting that two babies have died and hundreds more people have been sickened as Louisiana deals with a spreading outbreak. “Your strong public support for this vaccine will save lives.”

For generations, the idea of a senator needing to ask the nation’s top health official to promote vaccinations would have been unthinkable. Yet Cassidy, a physician who agonized about Kennedy’s record of anti-vaccine rhetoric before voting to install him atop the nation’s public health agencies

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