Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims he won’t restrict access to vaccines if confirmed to lead U.S. health policy, but his right-hand man has other ideas.
Kennedy’s personal attorney Aaron Siri, who has been helping Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services interview candidates for top health jobs, has sued the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval for the polio vaccine, The New York Times reported.
Siri and Kennedy have also been asking candidates their views on vaccinations, suggesting that if confirmed, Kennedy—who for years has peddled debunked conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism—would stack the HHS and the agencies it oversees with fellow anti-vaxxers, the Times reported.
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Kennedy wants Siri to join him as the HHS’s general counsel, sources told the paper, but Siri thinks he might be more effective at hobbling public health programs from the outside.
Kennedy and Siri have both claimed to be on the side of vaccine “freedom,” saying they don’t want to take vaccines away from people who want them. But in 2022, Siri filed a suit on behalf of the anti-vaccine group Informed Consent Action Network trying to scrap the FDA’s approval for the polio shot.
Siri told The Daily Beast that if the IPOL vaccine were withdrawn, other combo vaccines would still be available. These other vaccines provide protection against a group of other infections such as hepatitis, diphtheria, and tetanus at the same time.
“The petition, if granted by the FDA, would not leave adults or children without a polio vaccine. The subject of the petition was just one of the six polio vaccines)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/downloads/child/0-18yrs-child-combined-schedule.pdf__;!!LsXw!XuOYKlxFqQB57UcH_dXxefAxZmQCsm2zzTN6s07eAfxKP1Nkk__RhTb8v5cFkfHaVHnMp5UTqXn2mPG3z_iGpT7dsCk$" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" title="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/downloads/child/0-18yrs-child-combined-schedule.pdf__;!!LsXw!XuOYKlxFqQB57UcH_dXxefAxZmQCsm2zzTN6s07eAfxKP1Nkk__RhTb8v5cFkfHaVHnMp5UTqXn2mPG3z_iGpT7dsCk$"> six polio vaccines currently licensed (IPOL, Pediarix, Pentacel, Kinrix, Quadracel, and Vaxelis), and only concerned its licensure for children. It is false to claim that the petition sought to eliminate ‘the polio vaccine,’ as if there is only one, and that our client sought to leave Americans without the choice to get vaccinated for polio.”
He has also petitioned FDA regulators to “pause distribution” of 13 other vaccines, including hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus and diphtheria. Siri told the Times the petitions were filed on behalf of clients, as if that makes the lawsuits any less alarming.
Trump told Time magazine this week that he and Kennedy had spoken about vaccines, though he gave a nonsensical answer when asked whether he agreed with Kennedy that vaccines cause autism.
He did say he wants to “see the numbers” and “do very serious testing,” and would consider getting rid of vaccines that he deems “dangerous” and “not beneficial.” (More than 20 studies—including one that followed 660,000 children over 11 years—have found that vaccines do not cause autism.)
The latest polio vaccine was subjected to 300 studies both before and after it was approved, and more than 280 million people have received the vaccine worldwide, the Times reported. But Siri wants to also test the vaccine in a randomized, double-blind clinical trial.
That would mean giving some children the polio shot and giving others a placebo, and then hoping the ones in the placebo group don’t catch a highly infectious disease that attacks the nervous system and can cause organ failure, paralysis and death.
Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press last weekend that he would be hard-pressed to get rid of the polio vaccine, but that he was open to hearing arguments against it.
This story was updated with a quote from Aaron Siri.
