Robert F. Kennedy Jr., soon to be the new head of Health and Human Services, has stirred up more controversy this week after sources confirmed his private attorney filed a petition in 2022 requesting the Food and Drug Administration revoke approval of the Polio vaccine.
Polio is a highly infectious disease that primarily affects children and young adults and can cause respiratory and spinal paralysis as it attacks the nervous system. By the mid-20th century, the disease had spread around the world and killed or paralyzed half a million people every year.
Thanks to physician Jonas Salk, the polio vaccine was available across the US, Canada, and parts of Finland by the 1950s. Within a decade, only 161 cases of polio were reported. Salk refused to profit off the vaccine and worked hard to ensure everyone had access to it. By 1994, polio was eliminated in the United States.
In 2022, Kennedy’s lawyer and close friend, Aaron Siri, petitioned the Informed Consent Action Network to challenge the safety of the polio vaccine and consequential vaccine mandates. As head of Health and Human Services, Kennedy will oversee the FDA, continuing to review Siri’s petition. Kennedy will have the opportunity to intervene in the reviewing process if he so chooses.
When asked if he would reverse vaccine mandates, he responded, “People ought to have a choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information.” Furthermore, Trump told Time in an exclusive post-election interview that he is considering removing some vaccines for children. “If I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial,” he said.
He is not considering revoking approval for the polio vaccine. “The polio vaccine is the greatest thing,” he said in an interview on Meet the Press on Sunday. “If somebody told me to get rid of the polio vaccine, they’re going to have to work real hard to convince me.”
Other Republicans, like Mitch McConnell, who survived polio, have also expressed concern for Kennedy’s potential to revoke FDA approval for the vaccine. “The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease,” McConnell said. “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed – they’re dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”
