With a new President soon to be inaugurated and a new cabinet ready for confirmation, there is more than a hint of trepidation about who will ultimately make up Donald Trump’s team. And the spotlight shines brightest on Trump’s choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It is Kennedy’s track record as an anti-vaccination voice that troubles so many of the nation’s most respected medical experts, including former director of the National Institution of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Fauci also spearheaded the country’s battle against COVID-19. But Fauci is certainly not alone.
Over the years, Kennedy has crisscrossed the country sharing his theory and beliefs that vaccinations—including the polio vaccine— are linked to autism, a condition related to brain development. His beliefs are based on a long-debunked study first reported in the British medical journal The Lancet linking the MMR vaccine to autism.
Kennedy’s vaccine reticence has resulted in a crisis of confidence among many parents, many of whom are today opting out of vaccinating their children. It’s a troubling trend for Dr. Josh Williams, a pediatrician at Denver Health and Hospitals.
“Historically,” said Williams, “there have been cycles in vaccine confidence,” citing the smallpox vaccine as one example. “There were a lot of people hesitant when it first came out.” To overcome people’s concern about long-term health issues, he said, “our job is to work with families on what is misinformation and what is accurate…to reassure them.”
As he awaits confirmation hearings, Kennedy has backtracked on one specific vaccine, the polio vaccine. “I’m all for the polio vaccine,” he told reporters as he made the rounds speaking with senators whose vote will either confirm or kill his nomination.
But in interviews in which he’s shared his views over the years, he has essentially condemned the polio vaccine as a death delivery system at worst, a life altering choice at best. The vaccine, he has said, “killed many, many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.”
In a single year in the 1950’s, the polio virus infected more than 58,000 mostly young people across the country, 3,200 of whom died. Many were left paralyzed or permanently disabled. Some hospital wards were cleared of traditional bedding and replaced with iron lungs; bulky steel contraptions used to assist polio victims to breathe. The virus had paralyzed their lungs from doing their job.
During the era, young children wearing bulky metal braces and others in wheelchairs were common sights, most victims of the virus that changed life in America.
The polio scare caused fairs to be cancelled and movie theaters and public swimming pools to close out of fear that they could be breeding grounds for the virus. It wasn’t until 1955 when Dr. Jonas Salk and his team introduced the polio vaccine that the country returned to a degree of normalcy.
The polio virus was approved on April 12, 1955. It was administered to the first patient at the Mayo Clinic the very next day. It remains one of the 20th Century’s most renowned medical accomplishments. The vaccine has since been administered around the world saving millions of lives in the process.
For baby boomers, the memory of polio remains as the most profound medical scare of their childhood. But it’s not just ‘boomers’ who share the memory, albeit vicariously. It’s also not just casual conversations with colleagues about the virus that stand as stark reminders of the disease or others unknown that may one day haunt the future.
“I would point to my own grandmother,” Williams said. “She gave me the vaccine cards of my father…they knew they (children) could contract polio; they knew it was possible.”
President-elect Trump has tried to reassure the public that he’s heard the concerns about his HHS-designee and his earlier attacks on vaccines. Trump calls himself a “big believer in vaccines,” but adds that everything needs to be looked at.
But it is Kennedy’s words, most especially his belief that vaccines have “killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did,” that provide less than full confidence to public health officials that he won’t carry through on his vaccine fears.
Dr. Williams, who said he was not speaking about Kennedy’s views or politics and only as a medical expert, said that at Denver Health, “DHH is aware of these concerns.”
Williams regularly counsels parents of young children about vaccine safety. “I think there is always going to be another worry for vaccine experts to look at,” equating it to the whack-a-mole game. “The real work is to improve vaccine confidence.” He says the best way he’s found to do this is through sit down visits with families and to tell them, “I care about them.”
