RFK Jr.’s lawyer is asking the FDA to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine

Aaron Siri, the attorney for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — President-elect Donald Trump’s presumptive nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services — petition 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 halt the distribution of 13 other vaccines, including those that protect against hepatitis B and COVID-19. His most recent application was to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Like Kennedy, Siri is critical of vaccines, and through the Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit with which both men are affiliated, each has repeatedly made the false claim that vaccines are dangerous or cause autism.

“I love Aaron Siri,” Kennedy said in one clip played on a recent episode of a podcast hosted by Informed Consent Action Network founder Del Bigtree. “No one has been a greater asset to the medical freedom movement than him.”

The war against polio vaccines has already taken a human toll. In 2022 it became one team of federal scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated a series of polio cases in Rockland County, NY, where 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 and announced that he would also make it free. Speaking to Salon last year, Dr. Peter Salk that his father would be “really puzzled” by the rise and spread of anti-vaccine ideology. “His whole commitment was to protect the population from infectious diseases,” Salk said.