DEAR GOVERNOR POLIS

 

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