Garcia blasts Taylor Greene for anti-vax ‘conspiracy theories’ and ‘wild accusations’
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) came under fire from a Democratic congressman accusing her of spreading "conspiracy theories and wild accusations" about the COVID-19 vaccine after she told an expert witness testifying in committee, "I'm not a doctor but I have a PhD in recognizing bullshit when I hear it."
Rather than use her time to ask questions of the expert witness, Greene delivered a five-minute anti-vax speech that included several falsehoods during Thursday'a hearing.
"I'm sorry y'all had a go through that," U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said after Greene's remarks. "That was a lot of conspiracy theories and wild accusations, which we know have been debunked by biomedical science. And we should be clear that vaccines work and save lives and they have [saved] millions of lives in this country. Now, it's really unfortunate that we're actually here having this hearing trying to poke holes and cause more vaccine hesitancy amongst the public."
The expert witness denounced Congresswoman Greene's claims that "children were at no risk, practically zero risk of being hospitalized or deaths from COVID 19. We knew that young people healthy young people were not at risk."
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"I do need to apologize to the 1000 or so parents of children who are under four years of age who have died of COVID 19 who were unvaccinated because there were deaths and are continuing to be deaths in children and that is the reason why they need to get vaccinated," said Dr. Peter Marks, a hematologist oncologist who is the FDA's director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
Rep. Garcia accused Greene of making "countless" social media posts, having "spread misinformation," and "encouraged parents to refuse routine vaccinations for their children," and "even compared our pandemic efforts responses to the Holocaust."
He then read from one of Greene's social media posts: "Vaccinated employees getting vaccination logo, just like the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear a gold star."
"That is the level of insanity and attacks that we're having here as we actually debate the lives saved around vaccinations," Garcia added. "Now, this same member has also held shadow public hearings, promoting ideas that COVID is a bioweapon to target people with specific races and the vaccines, and I quote, cause turbo cancers."
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"Have the COVID vaccines resulted in an increase in cancers and are turbo cancers real?" Garcia asked Marks. "Dr. Marks, would you clarify once again, for the American people, do the COVID vaccines cause turbo cancers?
"I'm a hematologist oncologist that's board certified. I don't know what a 'turbo cancer' is," Marks replied. "It was a term that was used first in a paper in mouse experiments describing an inflammatory response. There are, there, we have not detected any increase in cancers with the COVID-19 vaccine."
Watch a portion of Greene's and Garcia's remarks below or at this link.