It seems unconscionable that Americans are arguing over the importance and efficacy of vaccines.
A study reported this year in The Lancet examined the worldwide impact of vaccines, surmising: “Since 1974, vaccination has averted 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children younger than 5 years.” That was when the World Health Organization launched the Expanded Programme on Immunization, making lifesaving vaccines available globally.
But 25 years of misinformation and growing mistrust of institutions have sowed doubt about vaccines in the United States. It also has opened the door for President-elect Donald Trump to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy does not have a medical or scientific background. His only apparent qualifications to oversee Medicare, Medicaid, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health is as an outspoken critic of vaccines. He also has pushed conspiracy theories doubting that AIDS is caused by HIV and claiming COVID “is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people.”
That led Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to meet with doctors and epidemiologists at a UW Medicine facility in Seattle. Confirming Kennedy’s nomination, Murray said, would “set our country back in a way that I cannot fathom.”
Murray added: “I wish everybody could go back in their memories to talk to their grandmothers about what it was like — the relief that I remember my mother having when I was really young, when, oh my gosh, we can send our kids to school, they’ll get the polio vaccine, they will not have to live in an iron lung. The relief was overwhelming.”
The impact of anti-vax rhetoric has been clear in Washington.
“The number of parents who are choosing to delay their childhood vaccines or are choosing to decline childhood vaccines has really gone higher and higher and higher,” said Dr. Helen Chu, a professor at the University of Washington. “We’re really at a turning point in how people are thinking about vaccine hesitancy.”
It is not a coincidence that the state has seen an outbreak of pertussis — commonly known as whooping cough. More than 1,500 cases have been recorded this year in Washington, the highest total in at least a decade. As of mid-November, Clark County led the state with 406 cases.
It also is not a coincidence there has been a revival of measles. In 2000, the virus was considered eradicated in the United States. By 2019, there were 1,274 cases spread across 31 states.
Trump — who once suggested the injection of disinfectants to fight the COVID virus — has recommended further examination of a supposed link between the measles vaccine and autism. Several such studies — in the United States, England, Denmark and elsewhere — have found no link.
It is one thing for individuals to embrace misinformation. It is quite another for the federal government to entrench that information and use it to influence public policy. As the Associated Press explains: “The FDA could delay approval of new vaccines or require additional studies for already approved vaccines. Health insurers and government programs look to the department to determine which vaccines should be paid for. … The department is responsible for billions of dollars in funding for medical research and disease prevention.”
When it comes to Kennedy’s confirmation, Murray and the other senators should reaffirm the nation’s belief in vaccines.
