A vanishing number of Americans have seen what a child horribly disfigured by polio looks like. I have. It was something I witnessed in the early 1990s while traveling abroad. It’s something I said I never wanted to see again. Later, as eradication efforts ramped up, delivering vaccines globally and coming so near to success that it seemed the disease would go the way of smallpox, I cheered the impending day when no child would ever suffer this fate again.
Then the anti-vaccination movement began gaining traction in America and abroad. And now Aaron Siri, a man opposed to all vaccinations, including that for polio, has the ear of the president-elect, who is completely divorced from reality.
Make no mistake, the present recklessness of anti-vaccination activists coupled with about-to-be-installed health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, who has also devoted his life to opposing vaccines in children based on easily debunked conspiracy theories, will bring polio back to these shores. And make no mistake about this either. No anti-vaccination activist will ever accept responsibility for this impending outcome. They are driven by their egos and their ignorance, not by any love America’s children, who will pay for this with their bodies and their lives. American voters have betrayed our most vulnerable.
This is unforgivable.
— David James, Fairbanks
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