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President-elect Donald Trump has hailed the polio vaccine as a “great thing,” but an attorney with ties to Trump's pick to lead the nation's top health agency asked a question The US Food and Drug Administration to revoke the approval of a vaccine used in the United States.
His attorney, Aaron Seery, submitted. The petition In the year On behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN, a nonprofit organization challenging the safety of vaccines and vaccine mandates by 2022. Siri is working closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the vaccine skeptic and Trump's choice to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — to select officials to serve in the incoming administration. He was also Kennedy's personal attorney during his own presidential campaign.
“The FDA continues to review the petition,” an agency spokesman said in an email to on Friday. We cannot predict when the reviews will be completed. In making a final decision, FDA will consider the concerns listed in the petition. FDA will respond directly to the requester, and that response will be posted on the docket. We cannot comment further at this time.
If Kennedy is confirmed as head of HHS, he would oversee the FDA and could take the unusual step of interfering with the complaint review process. as if Recent interviewKennedy told NBC that he would not vaccinate anyone, but that “people should have a choice, and that choice should be better informed.”
In an interview with Time magazine that took place in late November but was published this week, Trump said that more research would be done and that he would consider removing some vaccines for children, saying, “If it's dangerous, I don't think it's helpful.” He said.
But Trump also praised the polio vaccine.
“The polio vaccine is the biggest thing. If somebody tells me to get rid of the polio vaccine, they're going to have to work really hard to convince me,” Trump told NBC's “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday.
It's the plea and Kennedy's relationship with his lawyer. First reported The New York Times
reached out to the Trump transition team and ICAN for comment, but did not receive a response.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, himself a polio survivor, issued a warning Friday about an issue that appeared to be aimed at Kennedy.
“The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and promises to eradicate this devastating disease,” he said in a statement. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not only uninformed, but dangerous. Anyone seeking Senate approval to serve in the incoming administration would do well to avoid any association with such efforts.
The polio vaccine is considered a major achievement in global public health. It was once a disease that plagued and killed thousands of Americans, but the advent of vaccination in the 1950s greatly reduced its incidence worldwide; Eradication of disease On the verge of becoming reality.
In the year In the 1950s, before a vaccine was available, polio killed or paralyzed more than half a million people worldwide each year. As he says World Health Organization.
Siri's petition asks the FDA to withdraw or suspend approval of the killed polio vaccine until a “well-controlled and properly powered double-blind trial of sufficient duration to evaluate the safety of this product” can be conducted.
Siri filed the petition the same year health officials in New York stepped up vaccination campaigns against polio after an unvaccinated young adult contracted the virus and the virus was found in local sewage. This case is the first in America in over a decade.
The petition centers on the seemingly alarming fact that there have been no placebo-controlled clinical trials to prove the vaccine's safety – but they say it's a misrepresentation to make it appear that the risks of the polio vaccine may outweigh the benefits. It's not true
In fact, placebo-controlled trials are not considered ethical for most vaccines because a portion of the people participating in them will not take the vaccine, leaving them unprotected. Polio is not widespread, and it would be unethical to intentionally infect a healthy person with the virus. There is no cure for polio, and an unprotected person can be paralyzed for life.
Dr. Paul Offitt, an immunologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told the New York Times, “You're replacing a theoretical risk with a real risk.” “The real risks are diseases.”
This is what the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Serious adverse events It has been documented in connection with the use of inactivated polio vaccine. Very rarely, people may have a reaction to the vaccine if they are allergic to antibiotics such as streptomycin, polymyxin B, or neomycin.
Siri's petition focuses on an inactivated polio vaccine that has been used in the United States for more than two decades.
The US has moved away from the oral vaccine – a weakened but live version of the virus – because about one in 3 million times if given, the weakened virus can cause paralysis in the vaccine recipient. However, the oral vaccine is still used in some countries.
The inactivated polio vaccine used in the United States is given by injection and does not carry that risk, making it safer for those infected. But the injected vaccine does not create something called mucosal immunity, which means it does not prevent the virus from infecting people if it enters the body.
Instead, the vaccine protects people from the worst: It helps the immune system recognize the virus and fight it before it reaches the nervous system.
It does not stop the spread of the virus because people who have the virus can still be infected and shed the virus in their feces.
In the United States, however, this was not a problem because – thanks to vaccination – the polio virus is not usually transmitted.
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Polio virus is transmitted from person to person through the fecal-oral route. When people get the virus on their hands after using the bathroom, they infect each other and then shake or touch hands.
The weakened virus from the oral vaccine can also be shed in the feces, and this can be a problem in under-vaccinated populations. If this spread occurs in poorly vaccinated people, there is a chance that it will turn into a paralytic form.
Most of the world's polio cases are caused by a vaccine-derived virus. In the year In 2023, the number of polio cases caused by vaccine-derived strains was 524, down from 881 in 2022.
's Manu Raju and Morgan Reimer contributed to this report.