Their investigative report—based on interviews with multiple health department employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation—revealed that employees were told of the startling policy change in meetings in October and November and that the policy would be implemented quietly and not put into writing.
Ars Technica has contacted the health department for comment and will update this post with any new information.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Fox News Digital he plans to meet with Senate Democrats, in addition to Republicans, as he looks to shore up support for confirmation as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in President-elect Trump's incoming administration.
Asked by Fox News Digital whether he would be meeting with Democrats on the Hill as well, Kennedy, a former Democrat himself, said, "Oh yeah."
However, the former independent presidential candidate didn't say which Senate Democrats he would meet.
"I don't know," he said when asked by reporters.
Kennedy kicked off his Capitol Hill meetings for his HHS bid on Monday, meeting with several Republicans. No Democratic senators were included in a list of dozens of lawmakers that he was set to meet with at the beginning of the week.
Last month, Trump announced Kennedy as his HHS pick. The two were initially running against each other in the 2024 election before Kennedy dropped out and endorsed Trump.
Kennedy's confirmation could face several obstacles, particularly when it comes to vaccines, agriculture and abortion.
He has been an outspoken skeptic of vaccinations, which some Republican and Democrat senators have pointed to as a concern.
Kennedy is also pro abortion rights and has supported abortion access throughout his life, which has left some Republicans with questions, as HHS has some authority over regulations that apply to abortion and those who provide them.
His critiques of the food industry and farming have given him some appeal with Democrats, but at the same time, Republicans representing agricultural states have stressed that they want to protect farmers and ranchers from certain burdensome policies and regulations.
It's unclear what exactly the coalition supporting Kennedy will look like in the Senate, whether he will have the support of all Republicans or if some Democrats will be needed to get him over the finish line.
A lawyer advising Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine.
Before vaccines were available in 1955, polio caused 15,000 cases of paralysis in the US each year.
The US eliminated the disease in 1979, but unvaccinated travelers can still carry polio in.
Iron lungs line up at the Ranchos Los Amigos Respiratory Center circa 1950.
Bettmann via Getty Images
Some health experts are concerned that polio could make a comeback in the US if the government revokes approval for the vaccine.
That's what lawyer Aaron Siri petitioned to the FDA in 2022. His petition is still under review but could get renewed attention if Donald Trump's nominee for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, is confirmed.
Kennedy has said he doesn't plan to revoke any vaccines as health secretary. However, he has a close relationship with Siri who represented Kennedy during his presidential campaign.
Moreover, Siri's polio petition was on behalf of the nonprofit Informed Consent Action Network, whose founder is close to Kennedy, The New York Times reported.
Polio vaccines helped eliminate the disease from the US in 1979.
Before then, in the 1950s specifically, cases of poliovirus ran rampant in the US. Hospitals overflowed with disabled or severely ill patients, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Doctors warn that pausing polio vaccinations could help the disease regain its foothold.
A virus that affects nerves in the spinal cord or brain stem causes polio.
A young girl using an abacus in a bed at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, circa 1950.
Douglas Grundy/Three Lions/Getty Images
Polio mainly affects children under the age of five. Most people only have mild symptoms, but one in 200 cases causes irreversible paralysis. Between 5% and 10% of paralyzed patients die when muscles used for breathing can no longer move, according to the World Health Organization.
The US had several polio epidemics in the 20th century, including in 1916 and 1937.
A doctor removes special casts to examine the a polio patient's legs in 1916.
Bettmann via Getty Images
Polio was first identified in 1909, though it had been around for centuries, and the US had a serious outbreak in 1916, which started in New York.
At the time, doctors understood very little about the disease, including how to treat and prevent it.
An estimated 6,000 people died and 21,000 had resulting paralysis from the 1916 outbreak.
There were a series of polio outbreaks in the 1940s and 1950s.
Two-month-old Martha Ann Murray is watched over by a nurse in an iron lung in 1952.
AP Photo
The number of polio cases rose from eight per 100,000 in 1944 to 37 per 100,000 in 1952, according to Yale Medical Magazine. During that period, about 60,000 children were contracting the disease each year.
There was an increase in people over the age of 10 getting the virus, too.
Treatments for polio included hot wool and physical therapy.
Larry Becker draws a hospital floor plan using his right foot in 1955.
AP Photo
Early on, some doctors would put patients in full-body casts, which could make paralysis permanent.
Roosevelt sought relief by taking dips in Georgia's warm springs.
During a 1940s polio outbreak, the Hickory Emergency Infantile Paralysis Hospital in North Carolina tried treating patients with boiled wool "hot packs" for the skin and physical therapy.
Patients with severe cases lived their entire lives in iron lungs.
A nurse oversees a boy with polio in an iron lung in 1955.
Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis/Getty Images
Bellows inside the large metal box provided suction to help patients breathe when they could no longer do so on their own. The device was first used to save the life of an eight-year-old patient in 1928.
Some famous people contracted polio as children, including Mia Farrow and Alan Alda.
John Farrow carries daughter Mia out of the hospital in 1954.
Bettmann via Getty Images
Farrow, the daughter of director John Farrow and the actress and Tarzan-girl Maureen O'Sullivan, became ill during an LA polio outbreak in the summer of 1954.
"What I saw will never leave me — in the hospitals and in the public wards for contagious diseases," Farrow said in 2000.
Franklin D. Roosevelt started the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now known as the March of Dimes, to find a cure for polio.
Children with polio meet Basil O'Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.
Matty Zimmerman/AP Photo
Roosevelt founded the organization with his former law partner, Basil O'Connor, to help fund research into a polio vaccine.
Roosevelt knew the effects of polio first-hand. He was diagnosed with polio in 1921 at the age of 39 and used a wheelchair, mainly in private, while he was president.
Celebrities such as Grace Kelly and Joan Crawford helped promote campaigns for a vaccine.
Grace Kelly with Mary Koloski at a March of Dimes event in 1955.
API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
These campaigns helped raise half of all donations to health charities in the US, PBS reported.
Jonas Salk was one of the researchers working on a polio vaccine.
Developer of the polio vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk in a laboratory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1954.
AP Photo
At the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Salk began developing a vaccine in the early 1950s.
He grew polioviruses on cultures of monkeys' kidney cells and then used formaldehyde to kill the virus.
When he injected the dead virus into live monkeys, it protected them from the disease, according to the Science History Institute.
After his vaccine proved successful on monkeys, Salk began testing children.
Jonas Salk gives a vaccine to a child in the 1950s.
Mondadori via Getty Images
Salk first injected children who had already had polio. He noted that their antibody levels rose after vaccination, a promising sign that it helped the body fight the infection.
Roosevelt's foundation also backed another potential prevention method, gamma globulin.
A line of children and parents wait to be immunized with gamma globulin in 1953.
Paul E. Thomson/AP Photo
In the early 1950s, over 220,000 children were injected with gamma globulin, proteins in blood plasma that are rich in antibodies. The hope was that the serum would boost kids' immune systems and keep them from contracting polio.
After looking at the data, though, a committee of epidemiologists and other experts concluded that gamma globulin wasn't effective.
The gamma globulin trials helped pave the way for similar trials with Salk's vaccine.
Salk gives a shot of the polio vaccine to a girl during test trials in 1954.
Bettmann/Getty Images
In 1954, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis sponsored a trial to test Salk's vaccine.
Nearly 2 million children between 6 and 9 years old participated. They were called "Polio Pioneers."
Participants were divided into three groups: the first group received the vaccine, the second received a placebo, and the third received neither the vaccine nor a placebo.
The following year, in 1955, the vaccine was declared 90% effective against Types 2 and 3 poliovirus. It was 60% to 70% effective against Type 1.
Nearly 2 million children participated in the trials, and the vaccine was found to be 90% effective.
Jonas Salk arrives in Pittsburgh with his family in 1955.
AP Photo
At a press conference, Thomas Francis Jr., director of the Poliomyelitis Vaccine Evaluation Center at the University of Michigan, called the vaccine "Safe, effective, and potent."
It was headline news. "The story has blanketed the front pages of all the papers I have seen along a 1,600-mile route from New York to Saint Louis, to Memphis and Dallas," Alistair Cooke reported for The Guardian at the time.
Though he had some detractors, Salk won many Americans' trust.
Joans Salk's polio vaccine in 1955.
AP Photo
It took mere hours for Salk's vaccine to be licensed for use after the announcement of its efficacy.
Vaccine distribution began almost immediately.
Polio vaccines are shipped to Europe in 1955.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
NFIP had already funded facilities that could start producing the vaccine right away. The US sent some vaccines to Europe, and some countries started up their own productions.
Children would receive a series of shots to complete the vaccination process.
Eight-year-old Ann Hill gets the polio vaccine days after Salk's announcement that it's effective.
AP Photo
Children needed three shots, each costing between $3 and $5 (around $35-$59 today), according to The Conversation.
Shortly after the vaccine program began, a tragic incident caused several deaths.
Vaccines are prepared to be distributed around the West Coast from Cutter Laboratories in April 1955.
Ernest K. Bennett/AP Photo
One of the facilities manufacturing the vaccine, Cutter Laboratories, had kept the live polio virus in hundreds of thousands of doses.
In April 1955, over 400,000 children received the improperly prepared vaccines. The mistake led to 260 cases of polio-based paralysis and several deaths, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Despite the incident at Cutter Laboratories, hundreds of thousands of children were vaccinated in 1955.
Son of the US Surgeon General Leonard McCormick "Bobo" Scheele receives the polio vaccine in May 1955.
Byron Rollins/AP Photo
The incident at Cutter Laboratories panicked many parents and the vaccine was pulled from the market on April 27, 1955.
However, after a massive effort to recheck all the vaccines confirmed they were safe to use, immunization resumed on May 15, 1955. Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of children received the vaccine.
Elvis got the vaccine backstage during the "Ed Sullivan Show."
Oct. 28, 1956: Elvis Presley receives the polio vaccine in New York City.
AP Photo
If people were hesitant to have their children vaccinated, Elvis may have helped persuade them. After he got the jab in the fall of 1956, many followed suit.
Within six months, 80% of America's youngest generation were vaccinated, Scientific American reported in 2021.
Other celebrities, including Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, also promoted the vaccine to help inform people of all races and genders.
A nurse prepares elementaary school children for a polio vaccine shot.
Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images
Roosevelt's foundation was heavily involved in promoting the vaccine and recruited celebrities like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald for their campaigns.
"There was a very early recognition that you couldn't just have white people talking about the vaccine," Stacey D. Stewart, former president and CEO of the March of Dimes, told NPR in 2021.
The polio vaccine quickly began protecting people against the virus.
Edward Scheffler with his mother after traveling by railroad in 1957.
AP Photo
Between 1953 and 1957, cases in the US dropped from 35,000 to 5,300 a year, according to the BBC.
Meanwhile, Salk's rival, Albert Sabin, was still working on his own polio vaccine.
Mark Stacey is visited by Albert Sabin (right) and Dr. Walter Langsam (left) in 1959.
Gene Smith/AP Photo
Sabin disagreed with Salk's method of using a vaccine with a killed virus. Instead, he preferred a live, yet weakened form that could be taken by mouth instead of injected.
Once Sabin showed his version was effective using a trial in the Soviet Union, it was approved for use in the US in 1961.
Because Sabin's vaccine was inexpensive and easy to administer many countries began using the oral method. In fact, the song "A Spoonful of Sugar (Helps the Medicine Go Down)" in the 1964 film "Mary Poppins" was inspired by Sabin's polio vaccine.
A combination of the two vaccines helped nearly eradicate polio worldwide.
An emergency polio ward in Boston, Massachusetts in 1955.
AP Photo
During the 2010s, the world eradicated polio Types 2 and 3. Only Type 1 remains. The World Health Organization hopes to wipe out the final strain by 2026, but that goal is impossible without polio vaccines.
This story was originally published on August 13, 2022, and updated on December 16, 2024. Jake Johnson contributed to a previous version of this post.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a stern warning to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after a report highlighted how one of Kennedy's associates had sought to rescind approval for a polio vaccine.
McConnell, a polio survivor, said in a statement that "efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed – they’re dangerous."
"Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts," he added, without naming Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic who is President-elect Trump's choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
McConnell's statement follows a New York Times report on Friday that highlighted how Kennedy's personal attorney, Aaron Siri, had represented clients in cases that sought to rescind approval for a version of the polio vaccine and others.
"Like millions of families before them, my parents knew the pain and fear of watching their child struggle with the life-altering diagnosis of polio. From the age of two, normal life without paralysis was only possible for me because of the miraculous combination of modern medicine and a mother’s love. But for millions who came after me, the real miracle was the saving power of the polio vaccine," McConnell said.
"For decades, I have been proud to work with devoted advocates – from Rotary International to the Gates Foundation – and use my platform in public life to champion the pursuit of cures for further generations. I have never flinched from confronting specious disinformation that threatens the advance of lifesaving medical progress, and I will not today.
The GOP leader was joined by his Democratic counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who demanded that RFK Jr. make his position on the polio vaccine clear.
"This would undoubtedly make America sick again," Schumer said, sharing the Times report on X. "It’s outrageous and dangerous for people in the Trump Transition to try and get rid of the polio vaccine that has virtually eradicated polio in America and saved millions of lives. RFK Jr. must state his position on this."
Reached for comment, a Trump transition team spokesperson said, "Mr. Kennedy believes the Polio Vaccine should be available to the public and thoroughly and properly studied."
Aaron Siri has a long legal history of attacking vaccines, and he's now advising RFK Jr. on the future of the country's public health, a New York Times report reveals.
We asked a health law expert about what to expect in the coming years: "It is critical that people exercise good judgment in the sources of their information to protect themselves."
The Vice President Kamala Harris open border looked like an easy gateway to international love, but the Biden COVID vaccine mandates put up a wall.
Former NCAA swimmer and conservative activist Riley Gaines shared the story of her marriage with fellow former University of Kentucky swimmer Louis Barker, who is originally from England, in a recent TikTok.
Barker and Gaines were both swimmers while in college. Gaines joined the University of Kentucky's swim team and made the All-SEC freshman Team in 2019. She was also on the All-SEC Second Team in 2019 and 2020. Barker participated in the British Olympic Trials qualifier in 2016. Then in 2018, Barker participated in the 2018 Commonwealth Games Trials qualifier.
The two dated for two years, between 2019 and 2021. In December 2021, Barker proposed to Gaines, which she announced on social media. They were married in May 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Now, Gaines, who has spoken out against illegal immigration and Vice President Harris for her poor handling of the border crisis, shared that her and her husband have been dealing with immigration issues themselves in recent years. Gaines says Barker, despite coming into the country legally, has not been able to attain citizenship or even a green card yet, despite the fact that the couple has been married for two years.
"Maybe you think you think he's well on his way to the U.S. citizen, and you would be wrong. After two and a half years of marriage, he still doesn't have his green card," Gaines said.
Gaines says the couple received a letter in the mail. The reason Barker has not been granted citizenship is that he does not have the COVID-19 vaccine.
"Think about how hard our government has made it for people migrating into this country legally in comparison to those who break the law. Because if you just walk across the southern border, you're given housing, a driver's license, money."
Elon Musk reposed Gaines' TikTok video on X with a message advocating for legal immigration reform. Musk himself is also a legal immigrant from South Africa who has also spoken in favor of immigration reform in the U.S. Musk has also denied a Washington Post report that alleges the tech billionaire began his career working in the U.S. illegally.
"Legal immigration to America is ridiculously slow and difficult, even for super talented people. Needs to be fixed," Musk wrote.
Musk moved to Canada at 18 and got citizenship there via his mother and, a few years later, studied at the University of Pennsylvania.
U.S. immigration law requires immigrant visa applicants to obtain certain vaccinations prior to the issuance of an immigrant visa. The COVID-19 vaccine was added to that list under the Biden-Harris administration.
Panel physicians who conduct medical examinations of immigrant visa applicants are required to verify that immigrant visa applicants have met the vaccination requirements, or that it is medically inappropriate for the visa applicant to receive one or more of the listed vaccinations.
However, none of this applies to people who sneak into the country illegally.
Gaines previously spoke out against illegal immigration in a social media spat with Mark Cuban.
After Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released data to lawmakers in September revealing that tens of thousands of illegal immigrants with sex offenses and homicide convictions have crossed the border into the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration, including 13,099 convicted of homicide and 15,811 of sexual assault, Gaines took aim at Cuban for suggesting Harris did a "good job" handling the border.
"We might have different standards for what qualifies as a 'good job,' but I don’t think the illegal entrance of 15,000+ rapists, 13,000+ murderers, and 320,000 missing children fits the bill," Gaines on X in response to Cuban.
Gaines' reference to the 320,000 missing children was from another report from the Department of Homeland Security released Aug. 21 that revealed the Biden-Harris administration had lost track of that number of migrant children who crossed the border without parents.
Meanwhile, ICE Boston announced on Wednesday the arrests of two illegal immigrants who have been charged with forcibly raping children in Massachusetts, as well as a third individual who was convicted of raping a child in Brazil, and was hiding in the U.S. after being caught and released at the U.S. border in 2022.
Discouraging Americans from being vaccinated is "very disturbing" and would result in "more severe illness and death in children," a top U.S. health official told lawmakers Tuesday following President-elect Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
National Institutes of Health Director Monica Bertagnolli made the comments after Rep. Lois Frankel, D-Fla., told her that she’s concerned "there's been some talk by some who might have leadership positions in next administration of discouraging vaccination.
"Could you tell me what would be the downside if our children specifically were not vaccinated?" Frankel asked Bertagnolli.
"If you go back 100 years ago, the leading cause of death – and it was dramatic – was infectious disease. And why did that change? Vaccination, that is the single reason," Bertagnolli told the House Appropriations Committee.
"And it’s been even in my career, my lifetime that I have also seen individuals who unfortunately were in the womb when their mother got rubella – terrible congenital malformations that happened. So it’s not just the consequences even for the individual – it can be mother to child and then finally across society when we see the spread of infectious disease," Bertagnolli continued.
"What we will see immediately if all vaccination suddenly stops, we will see much more severe illness and death in children," she also said.
Kennedy rose to prominence as a skeptic of vaccines, voicing concerns about their impact.
"Look around the world because there are other places in the world that have this, that do not have widespread vaccination of their populations, and look at the tragedies that we see there. I think it would be very disturbing," Bertagnolli added Tuesday.
U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., has called the choice of RFK Jr. to lead HHS "f------ insane."
"The RFK as Health Secretary appointment is f------ insane," he wrote on X. "He’s a vaccine denier and a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist. He will destroy our public health infrastructure and our vaccine distribution systems. This is going to cost lives."
Kennedy aligned with Trump after ending his own independent run for president, and Trump added the promise "make America healthy again" to his campaign.
Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
