Aaron Siri, the lawyer for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — President-elect Donald Trump’s presumptive nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services — petitioned the federal government on Friday to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine.
Siri, a prominent conspiracy theorist like Kennedy, has already filed a petition to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines, including those that protect against hepatitis B and COVID-19. His latest filing was to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Like Kennedy, Siri is critical of vaccines, and through Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit with which both men are affiliated , each person has repeatedly made the false claim that vaccines are dangerous or cause autism.
“I love Aaron Siri,” Kennedy said in a clip played on a recent episode of a podcast hosted by Informed Consent Action Network founder Del Bigtree. “There’s nobody who’s been a greater asset to the medical freedom movement than him.”
The war against polio vaccines specifically has already taken a human toll. In 2022, a team of federal scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated a string of polio cases in Rockland County, NY, in which an epidemic hit a large Hasidic Jewish community where anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are particularly popular.
Dr. Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine in 1955 to international acclaim, announcing he would also make it free. Speaking with Salon last year, Dr. Peter Salk said his father would be "really puzzled" by the emergence and spread of anti-vaccine ideology. "His whole commitment was protecting the population from infectious diseases," Salk said.
