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An attorney advising Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is criticizing a New York Times report this week that claimed he sought to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the polio vaccine.
“Contrary to hysterical media reports that the petition sought to make sure no polio vaccines would be available, the scope of the petition was quite narrow,” Aaron Siri, a close RFK Jr. adviser and partner at Siri & Glimstad LLP, told Fox News. “It simply asked the FDA to require a proper trial for licensure for children of a novel polio vaccine.”
The New York Times reported on Friday that Siri is “waging a war” against all vaccines, but Siri denied the claim, stating the report “falsely claimed 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.”
“In reality, the petition sought to ensure the safety of one of the six existing licensed polio vaccines that we inject into our children three times before their first birthday,” he said.
The report surfaced just days before RFK Jr. traveled to Capitol Hill this week to meet with Senators, seeking support for his confirmation as HHS Secretary, Fox notes.
The petition, filed in 2022 on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) rather than as an individual action by Siri, called for the FDA to suspend the polio vaccine IPOL for infants and children. ICAN’s request was based on concerns that IPOL, which was licensed in 1990 by Sanofi, was approved after pediatric trials that, according to the FDA, assessed safety for only three days following injection.
“This is not the traditional polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk or Albert Sabin that many people are familiar with, Siri added,” Fox reported. “Instead, it is a product utilizing a different technology, where the polio virus is grown on monkey kidney cells that have been genetically altered to replicate indefinitely, similar to cancer cells. Traces of these cells are present in each vaccine dose.”
Another petition filed on behalf of ICAN in 2021 focuses on 13 childhood vaccines containing aluminum adjuvants. The petition cites a peer-reviewed study that found discrepancies between the aluminum levels in these vaccines and the amounts listed on their FDA-approved labels, Fox noted. It calls on the FDA to verify and publicly release documentation proving the accuracy of the aluminum content or to halt distribution until the issue is resolved — a concern critics argue should not be controversial for products administered to infants.
“Currently, political labeling (pro-vaccine, anti-vaccine) is inadequate to encompass the realities of medical ethics, regulatory capture, and the influence of corporate money on health policy,” Siri told Fox. “We must be able to raise valid questions about vaccine safety, efficacy and policy without fear that any deviation from the mantra ‘safe and effective’ will be smeared with epithets and outrage.”
In the days following media reports about Siri’s petition, both Trump and RFK Jr. have stated that they support the polio vaccine, though they did not specify which one. RFK Jr. has expressed skepticism about some vaccines while supporting others, sharing these views in interviews during his 2024 presidential campaign as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) slogan, Fox reported.
“Mr. Kennedy believes the Polio Vaccine should be available to the public and thoroughly and properly studied,” Katie Miller, the transition spokeswoman for Kennedy, said in response.
Meanwhile, Trump said “everything should be looked at,” adding that he’s a “big believer in the polio vaccine,” during a Mar-a-Lago press conference Monday morning, Fox noted.
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