The brain worm. The bear. The sawed-off whale’s head. The shirtless shots. The conspiracy theories. The raw milk. The AIDS stuff. The emu. There are countless reasons to fear Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running the Department of Health and Human Services. At probably the tippy top of that list? The fact that he’s an anti-vaxxer who apparently has close ties to a guy who has asked the Food and Drug Administration to pull its approval of the polio vaccine.
Yes, The New York Times reports the disturbing news that Kennedy’s personal lawyer, who represented him during his run for president and is now helping him select health officials to serve in the second Donald Trump administration, “petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death.” That lawyer is Aaron Siri, whose polio petition was filed in 2022 and who does not discriminate when it comes to vaccines he’d like to take an axe to. According the Times, Siri “has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, COVID vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.” Most of Siri’s work has reportedly been done on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a group whose founder just happens to be a “close ally” of Kennedy.
While Kennedy has claimed, not very convincingly, that he does not intend to take away access to vaccines, his persistent undermining of them and his relationship with Siri does not inspire much confidence. According to the Times, Siri “has joined Mr. Kennedy in questioning and choosing candidates for top health positions,” and Kennedy has “privately expressed interest in having Mr. Siri serve in the Health and Human Services Department’s top legal job, general counsel.” (Siri has reportedly suggested he can be more effective from outside the administration; his law firm oversees about 40 people working on vaccine cases and policy. “I love Aaron Siri,” Kennedy has said. “There’s nobody who’s been a greater asset to the medical freedom movement than him.”)
In addition to requesting the government withdraw its approval of the polio vaccine, Siri has also petitioned the FDA to revoke or suspend approval of hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, and diphtheria. Siri additionally shares Kennedy’s debunked belief that vaccines cause autism; the two lawyers both worked on a medical malpractice case against a doctor who’d given a child the MMR vaccine, claiming it caused him to develop autism. According to the Times, “Kennedy sat through the trial and at the end, in early 2022, delivered closing arguments to the jury. He lost: The jury ruled in favor of the doctor.”
Speaking to Meet the Press over the weekend, Donald Trump said he is open to a review of the link between vaccines and autism—when, to be clear, there is none. And while he claimed that “the polio vaccine is the greatest thing” and said, “if someone told me get rid of the polio vaccine, they’re going to have to work really hard to convince me,” that is absolutely not as comforting as flat-out declaring the polio vaccine is here to stay, no matter what.
