‘Never appropriate’: Texas senator compares COVID treatments to Nazi experiments

State Sen. Bob Hall compared COVID treatments to medical experimentation done by Nazis during the Holocaust at a Texas Senate committee meeting last week.

Hall, a Republican from Edgewood, has repeatedly advocated against COVID vaccines and clinically proven treatments in recent legislative sessions. During a committee hearing Oct. 10, Hall repeated incorrect information about COVID treatments, calling them experimental and saying that the American people were treated like guinea pigs.

“And what we did to the American people starting in 2020, tell me how that would be different than what the Nazis did in the ‘40s? The Nazis that performed medical experiments on people. Didn’t we hold a trial somewhere for that? I think it was called Nuremberg,” Hall said.

Hall was discussing COVID vaccines and treatments during a hearing on Senate Bill 7, which would bar private companies from instituting COVID vaccine requirements. The bill was approved by the Senate and is being considered by the House during the special legislative session.

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Mary Pat Higgins, the president and CEO of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, said such comparisons are “never appropriate.”

“The Holocaust stands as a paradigm of genocide, and it is never appropriate to compare local events in the U.S. to the Holocaust, as it cheapens the sacrifice of the millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators,” Higgins said in a statement.

Hall’s chief of staff did not respond to emails asking for comment.

Anti-vaccine activists have long compared vaccinations to the experimentation and eugenics programs of Nazi Germany, said Karolina Koltai, an expert on the anti-vaccine movement who has a Ph.D. in information studies. Those comparisons have grown more frequent as the anti-vaccine movement has spread its message more widely throughout the COVID pandemic, Koltai said.

The Nazis’ medical experiments were conducted on inmates at concentration camps, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

These comparisons are not only inappropriate, they are incorrect for multiple reasons, said Koltai, a senior researcher and trainer with Bellingcat.

Both COVID vaccines and treatments were tested in clinical trials, all of which require participants to consent to participate in the trial for research purposes.

Remdesivir, the drug Hall was discussing during the committee hearing, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat COVID-19 patients in 2020. At the time, three clinical trials had been completed to determine whether the drug was safe and effective. Since then, the drug has continued to be studied in additional trials.

The bill being considered when Hall made his statements would prohibit any private company in Texas from requiring the COVID vaccine for its employees or contractors. Multiple medical groups in the state have criticized the bill.

Other anti-vaccine activists have made Nazi comparisons to near universal criticism and condemnation.

Last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apologized after he said being alive during the COVID pandemic was comparable to being alive in Nazi Germany. “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” he said.

Kennedy’s remarks were widely condemned, and he later apologized.

“Making reckless comparisons to the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jews, for a political agenda is outrageous and deeply offensive,” the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said in a statement after Kennedy made his remarks. “Those who carelessly invoke Anne Frank, the star badge, and the Nuremberg Trials exploit history and the consequences of hate.”