US Senate Minority Leader and polio survivor Mitch McConnell has condemned efforts to undermine the polio vaccine following reports that a lawyer linked to Robert F Kennedy Jr – the Health Secretary-elect for Donald Trump’s second presidency – has filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of the vaccine.
In a statement reported by many sockets McConnell, who contracted the disease as a child in 1944 — 11 years before the approval of the world’s first polio vaccine — said Friday: “The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and holds the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Attempts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not only uninformed – they are dangerous.”
The 82-year-old added: “Anyone seeking Senate approval to serve in the next administration would do well to avoid even the appearance of association with such efforts.”
McConnell’s latest comment comes after the first from the New York Times reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer who helped Kennedy select new health officials for Trump’s second term in the White House, filed a petition in 2022 calling on the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine. Trump has nominated Kennedy, an outspoken vaccine skeptic, as health secretary for his new administration – a move widely criticized by health experts.
According to the New York Times, Siri filed the petition on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a major anti-vaccination organization in the US. Siri has also asked federal regulators to withdraw or suspend vaccines against hepatitis B and 13 other vaccines, the newspaper reported.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccination views have been widely debunked, including the unsupported link between vaccines and autism.
Polio, also known as poliomyelitis, is a highly contagious viral disease that mainly affects children under the age of five. The poliovirus is transmitted through contaminated water, food, or contact with an infected person and destroys nerve cells in the spinal cord, which in turn causes muscle wasting and paralysis.
Since 1988, polio cases worldwide have declined by more than 99%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. declared on its website, adding that polio vaccines have since prevented about 20 million cases of paralysis in children.
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In response to the reports, a Trump spokesperson for Kennedy Jr. said told the Washington Post that Siri “at no time had a conversation about these petitions with Mr. Kennedy or any of the (Health and Human Services) nominees.”
The spokesperson added, among other things, that the vaccine “must be appropriately investigated and studied,” which has already happened.