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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a stark warning to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other skeptics of vaccines on Friday after a new report detailed the Donald Trump nominee’s ties to a lawyer who sought to revoke approval of the lifesaving polio vaccine for children.
“The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease,” McConnell, who had polio as a child, said in a statement. “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,” McConnell added, in a not-so-veiled reference to Kenndy being tapped by Trump to lead the U.S. Health and Human Services Department next year.
The New York Times revealed on Friday that Aaron Siri, a lawyer Kennedy has been consulting on whom to select as top health officials for the next Trump administration, has filed multiple legal petitions to block vaccines in recent years. That includes a 2022 petition for the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval of a standard polio vaccine for babies and children, claiming the agency needs to do further studies to prove its safety.
If confirmed, Kennedy would oversee the FDA and multiple other federal public health agencies. The environmental lawyer and son of former U.S. Attorney General and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is a prominent vaccine skeptic who has spread wild conspiracy theories over the years. Trump’s choice of Kennedy to lead the top health agency has alarmed public health experts and 77 Nobel laureates who urged the Senate to reject his expected nomination last week.
Some Republican senators have expressed concerns about Kennedy’s views, but none have publicly declared their opposition to his path to confirmation.
“I believe vaccines are appropriate. They have to be safe. I want to know what his real concerns are and what he would want to do different, but I do not want to lose our vaccine programs,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told reporters on Thursday.
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McConnell, meanwhile, reflected on his boyhood experience of struggling with polio and his parents’ “pain and fear of watching their child struggle with the life-altering diagnosis of polio.”
“From the age of two, normal life without paralysis was only possible for me because of the miraculous combination of modern medicine and a mother’s love. But for millions who came after me, the real miracle was the saving power of the polio vaccine,” he said Friday.
“For decades, I have been proud to work with devoted advocates – from Rotary International to the Gates Foundation – and use my platform in public life to champion the pursuit of cures for further generations,” the senator added. “I have never flinched from confronting specious disinformation that threatens the advance of lifesaving medical progress, and I will not today.”