Bluesky

My father had polio when he was about 2 years old. My grandparents, living in Brooklyn, were immigrants from Portugal. This was the Great Depression and they were already poor. My grandfather was a janitor, and my grandmother was a housewife. They had two other children to care for and to try to protect from the virus, which every summer would sweep through some town or city in America, infecting thousands, with no vaccine yet available. My father survived the bout with polio, though the growth of his right leg was stunted and he had to wear an orthopedic shoe for the rest of his life. Dad was a terrific pitcher, a talented southpaw, and dreamed of playing baseball professionally. But polio stole that dream from him. I keep this story close to my heart.

So when The New York Times reported that RFK Jr.’s lawyer, Aaron Siri, asked the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the approval of the polio vaccine, I was filled with rage. My father’s story and the story of the millions who have suffered and died from the disease are a matter of historical fact, as is the medical miracle of the advent of a vaccine to prevent the infection. In fact, after three decades with no reported cases, one case of the disease emerged outside of New York City in 2022, in a community undervaccinated for the infection. We don’t need to see more. And to make matters worse, last week, Reuters reported that President-elect Trump “will be talking to [RFK Jr.] about ending childhood vaccination programs”—not just for polio, but for everything.

My anger isn’t exactly for RFK Jr. and Aaron Siri—they are half zealots, half cynical grifters. Rather, it is for members of US Congress who are considering voting for RFK Jr.’s nomination to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and those in the media who have platformed RFK Jr.’s views as not-all-bad, as if you can choose from his various views like you’re ordering from a restaurant, asking the chef to hold the onions. There are no substitutions on this menu—to vote for, or to promote RFK Jr., is to get all of him.

I recently recalled what Adam Serwer said about Trump and his minions in 2018—cruelty is the point. Serwer said Trump and his supporters revel in the suffering of those they hate and fear. Still, messing with vaccination in the US takes cruelty to the next level. Now, they’re eating their own. As my Yale colleagues Jacob Wallace, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, and Jason Schwartz reported in 2023 in JAMA Internal Medicine, discouraging Covid vaccination has led to a disproportionate number of deaths among Republicans compared to Democrats.

With an administration ceding vaccine policy to RFK Jr., Republicans across the country are likely to “follow the leader” on immunization for other diseases. This has already been happening as Republicans and Republican-leaning independents sour on the importance of childhood vaccines—and it’s likely to get worse. In a startling development in Florida earlier this year, some GOP politicians even stated that they would be fine with sending unvaccinated kids to schools during a measles outbreak.This is madness; abject cruelty on a massive scale.

RFK Jr. has bragged that he’d tell researchers at the National Institutes of Health to give “infectious disease a break for about eight years.” Well, he isn’t giving infectious disease a break but leading its promotional tour. If this man gets what he wants, old scourges will be back with a vengeance. And those years, like those of my father’s childhood, filled with the terror of deadly diseases, the suffering and upheaval of sickness and death visited upon families, the lingering effects down the generations, will be here again.

I don’t buy the “but my kids will be vaccinated” talismanic thinking. No child should die of a preventable illness in the richest country on earth. And for those who think your families can escape the reach of this man’s folly, remember that many childhood diseases still depend on herd immunity in addition to direct protection to keep your kids safe, and highly infectious pathogens are always looking for a crack in the door to slip into your happy home. Spare me from hijacking of the slogan “my body, my choice” for your you-do-you, libertarian version of public health. As The New York Times put it in the wake of the Supreme Court decision upholding mandatory smallpox vaccination at the beginning of the 20th century:

The contention that compulsory vaccination is an infraction of personal liberty and an unconstitutional interference with the right of the individual to have the smallpox if he wants it, and to communicate it to others, has been ended [by the US Supreme Court].… [This] should end the useful life of the societies of cranks formed to resist the operation of laws relative to vaccination. Their occupation is gone.

Well, the cranks are back and they will be running the show now, from the White House to all the health agencies under President-elect Trump, unless we speak up. Opposition to RFK Jr. isn’t a hard call, as Mitch McConnell said last week: “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.”

We’ll see how Senator McConnell votes should RFK Jr. make it to consideration by the Senate. The rest of us should be pressing his colleagues to come out against the nomination now and to get his name out of contention before the new year. There is no silver lining to the RFK Jr. nomination, and there is no “living with it” either—the man is a death-eater and a menace.