In the marbled halls of the Dirksen Senate Office Building on April 22, 2026, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confronted a foundational pillar of modern medicine. Germ theory—the idea that specific microbes cause specific diseases—came under direct fire. Not from Kennedy. From senators wielding data. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) kicked off the exchange during the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s hearing on the FY2027 HHS budget. He quoted Kennedy’s 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci : “A doctrinal canon of the germ theory credits vaccines for the dramatic declines of infectious disease mortalities in North America and Europe during the twentieth century. … Most Americans accept this claim as dogma.…