As a biologist who teaches immunology and authored a BSCS high school textbook chapter on immunology, I am beyond appalled by the incoming administrations' plans for directing the FDA to rescind the approval of the polio vaccine as well as several other important vaccines. The claim is that their safety and efficacy has not been shown in a double-blind clinical trial of vaccine versus placebo. Anyone who knows anything about clinical trials understands that such a study for polio and other childhood diseases would be unethical, immoral, and a health-care disaster.
The incoming Trump cult had claimed that they would not attack the well-established benefits of vaccines, but of course they lied. Not surprising given their troves of previous lies, from Supreme Court nominees to disclaiming Project 2025 to assuring the gullible that grocery prices would immediately drop to the thousands of verifiable untruths spewed during the last eight years.
RFK Jr. and his rabid anti-vaccine minions are more interested in self-promotion than in public welfare. The polio vaccine has proven to be safe and effective since the 1950's. In the late 1700's, Edward Jenner established the scientific basis for vaccines. And over 2000 years ago, Chinese folk medicine practiced variolation to greatly lessen the illness caused by smallpox. The anti-science ignorance of the Trump cult is astonishing, but more importantly, it poses a danger to millions of Americans. What will they attack next? Antibiotics? Appendectomies? Chemotherapy? ???
I have a simple proposal for the Trump anti-vaxxer crowd - there is no need for their proposed double-blind clinical trial - just let parents choose for their children whether or not to be vaccinated for polio, and then expose the two groups to the polio virus. Perhaps the debilitation, paralysis, and deaths in the unvaccinated group and their absence in the vaccinated group will change some minds in the no-vaccine crowd. PLEASE NOTE - this paragraph is written with extreme sarcasm. As a scientist and a grandfather, I would never condone a study that would surely cause great harm to the unvaccinated. Similarly, I do not support any parent who chooses not to have their child immunized against deadly diseases. These people are benefiting from the herd immunity provided by those who are vaccinated, and this will disappear if the Trump cult has its way.
Please share if you agree.
