EDITORIAL: Don’t let vaccination enemy be health czar

An American scientist developed a vaccine in the 1950s that saved the country and much of the world from the horrors of a disease that preyed on children in annual waves of death and suffering.

That is history, documented and celebrated as one of the great achievements of medical science. Yet the man who has been nominated to be America’s secretary of health and human services calls it “a mythology.”

The disease was polio. The virologist who conquered it was Dr. Jonas Salk. The would-be health czar who disparages the life-saving product of Salk’s heroic service is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.     

Kennedy’s claim to fame, besides his status as a nephew of a deceased U.S. president, is his relentless campaign to spread doubt and fear about vaccines with the intent of persuading people, including parents making decisions about their children’s health, to refuse vaccination.

The Senate must act to keep Kennedy’s hands off the nation’s health. Failing to block this bizarre and dangerous cabinet appointment would be an everlasting stain on the upper house of Congress.

Kennedy has disqualified himself from any government position involving health with the damage done by his fear mongering aimed at undermining confidence in the immunizations that are the foundation of public health worldwide. His repeated claims that vaccinations cause autism, though proven false, have exploited the fears and desperate hopes of parents with autistic children, and probably have had a role in falling vaccination rates.

It his glib denigration of the polio vaccine, however, that is the most telling evidence of his unfitness for the powerful position he will assume if the Senate fails to do its duty.

Few medical breakthroughs have demonstrated their lifesaving impact as dramatically as the polio vaccine. In the early 1950s, polio infected an average of 60,000 people in the U.S. each year, almost all of them children, leaving more than 20,000 paralyzed and 3,000 dead.

In 1955, following the approval of Salk’s vaccine as safe and effective in the largest public health trial in the nation’s history, Congress passed the Polio Vaccine Assistance Act that provided federal grants to states to immunize children with the polio vaccine.

As immunization spread across the country, the scourge of polio withered to several hundred cases a year, then to a few and then to none. In 1979, the Center for Disease Control declared that polio was eradicated in the U.S.

The defeat of the disease occurred nearly 50 years ago, so many Americans may not fully understand the relief it brought families in the polio era. For people who were alive in the 1950s, it meant salvation from an infectious sickness that cruelly afflicted children and terrorized parents.

The disease hit Wisconsin harder than most states. Outagamie County drew national attention as a virulent hotspot of the polio epidemic. In the summer of 1955, more than 200 cases were reported there. A number of children died. Others endured such profound paralysis that they could no longer breathe. Their last resort was encapsulation in the breathing machines known as iron lungs. Most polio survivors were left with lifelong impairments.

The polio virus claimed victims in Ozaukee County too, and communities here, as elsewhere in southeastern Wisconsin, closed swimming pools and in some cases put quarantines in effect to keep children in their homes to slow the spread of the sickness, which peaked in summer.

An estimated 300,000 polio survivors are alive in the U.S. today. Though they have adapted to their disabilities, many still have to rely on braces or wheelchairs. A group representing polio survivors is part of a coalition of physicians, health organizations and public health advocates that is urging the Senate to reject Kennedy’s appointment.

As health secretary, Kennedy would have the power to cut federal funds for childhood vaccination programs, use his anti-vaccine influence on legislators in states that are already wavering on immunization mandates and carry on his efforts to undermine confidence in vaccination programs with a louder microphone. Or in the worst case, lead an effort to revoke FDA approval of the polio vaccine.

Scientists warn that if even isolated areas of the country back off on vaccination, the polio menace could return.

Kennedy has been quoted as saying “it is just not true” that the polio vaccine has eradicated the disease.

The president who nominated him says Kennedy is qualified to be the nation’s most powerful health official. It is just not true.