Governor Polis:
While I support many of your political actions, your
endorsement of RFK Jr. to head the nation’s health services is ethically and
scientifically reprehensible. Our chief
health officer is an antivaxxer, science-denier, and lying conspiracy advocate
who is yet another example of the emergent kakistocracy of school boards, state
houses, Congress, and the President and his sycophantic administration members.
Over 2000 years ago, the Chinese understood how to protect
their children from the ravages of smallpox.
Over 200 years ago, Jenner described the fundamental efficacy of
immunization against the virus. Because
of immunization initiatives, this deadly disease has been eradicated
globally. Many other debilitating and
deadly diseases have also been controlled by immunization programs, but we now
have health care leaders who have actively promoted the false and dangerous
claims that vaccines are unsafe and worse than the diseases. These misguided actions by Kennedy and
like-minded, ill-informed charlatans are enabling the re-emergence of once
well-controlled infectious diseases and have made our response to new diseases
more difficult.
I invite you to walk with me through the small rural
graveyard in my home township to ponder the large number of headstones of young
people, many of whom died of now-preventable communicable diseases. Give some thought regarding how Salk and
Sabin altered the dangerous trajectory of the polio virus. Also please read about the devastation of
communities that were not immunized against such diseases, including the
Samoans who listened to Kennedy’s anti-MMR vaccine crusade, and subsequently
lost 83 members of their small population.
Unfortunately, you poured gasoline on the anti-vaxx fire, and
many will be consumed.
Sadly,
Douglas E. Swartzendruber
Professor of Biology, Emeritus
University of Colorado –
Colorado Springs
Denver, Colorado
