After a meeting this week with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R- Ala. says his stance on vaccines is a “breath of fresh air.”

“He and I both grew up, and we have three vaccines — tuberculosis, polio and smallpox,” he said.

“And that’s how much it’s grown. … Now we get dozens and dozens. At the end of the day, he doesn’t believe that we all need to be guinea pigs, that we need to find out that it actually worked first.”

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends exactly a dozen vaccines for children between birth and six years of age, including the one for polio.

Their website says that these vaccines can prevent or lessen the symptoms of multiple diseases that could possibly be deadly for children like diphtheria, Hepatitis B, and Tetanus.

Tuberville also supported Kennedy’s long held skepticism about the COVID vaccine.

“Like the COVID vaccine, it was kind of a hit and miss, thrown out there and we all took it. And I think everybody in this group has lost somebody … possibly from the [COVID] vaccine that were perfectly healthy.”

According to the CDC “serious adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination are rare but may occur.”

The agency said that during the pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines “underwent the most intensive safety analysis in U.S. history.”

“COVID-19 vaccines do not increase the risk of death from non-COVID causes when compared to those who have not been vaccinated,” the CDC said.

Kennedy has been one of the nation’s most prominent vaccine skeptics for several years, but says he is not anti-vaccine.

Tuberville said he told him: “I’m not against anything; I just want to go by the science and do what’s right. And not force something on people that they don’t need to take.”

In the past, Kennedy has said in a podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”

“I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated,” he said.

He has also frequently voiced the belief that vaccines can cause autism, which he discussed with U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla. in their meeting this week.

“He brought up autism, and in his age and his time, it was one in 10,000 kids had autism,” Mullin told Roll Call. He added that those rates have changed significantly since then.

He said the only U.S. population that doesn’t “have any autism at all is Amish, and they give no vaccines.”

But a 2010 study conducted by the International Society for Autism Research found that cases of autism spectrum disorder in Amish communities are similar to the general population, despite varying rates of vaccination.

U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., told Roll Call she will ask Kennedy about abortion when she meets with him this week.

“One of the questions I will be asking him is obviously the preservation of the Hyde Amendment,” she said, which prohibits federal spending on abortion in most circumstances.

“That’s very important to me.”

Tuberville said that he pressed Kennedy on his history of supporting abortion rights during their meeting Tuesday and said Kennedy agrees with Trump that abortion should be a states’ issue.

He said the two men did not discuss abortion pill regulation.