Vaccine Advisory Board Chair: Would Polio Really Be Such A Bad Time?
Category: Health, Science & Technology
Via: bob-nelson • 10 months ago • 7 commentsBy: Robyn Pennacchia, Wonkette
What if we brought polio back?
For funsies!
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S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In 1952, a major polio outbreak resulted in over 50,000 cases — nearly half of which resulted in paralysis for the victims. In 1959, there were 1200 people in the United States living their lives in iron lungs. Now, there is just one — Martha Lillard , who contracted the virus at just five years old during a trip to an amusement park called Joyland in 1953. We haven’t had a single diagnosed case of indigenous wild poliovirus since 1979 (we had one imported case in 1993 and one in an unvaccinated individual who got a vaccine-derived strain of the virus in 2022 ). This is all thanks to the fact that, in 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, becoming a hero and frequent crossword puzzle clue to us all.
Well, to a lot of us anyway. Because now the guy in charge of RFK Jr.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) isn’t so very sure that we need to bother with that anymore. You know, because maybe polio just won’t come back if we stop immunizing against it. Just like how measles didn’t come back when people stopped vaccinated against that.
Oh, wait.
“I think also as you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then. Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different. And so that, those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.
“We have to take, we have to take into account that ‘Are we enjoying herd immunity right now?’ That it may look like it’s better not to get a vaccine than to get a vaccine, but if we take away all of the herd immunity does that switch, does that teeter totter switch in a different direction? So that’s how I would look at both oral polio or polio vaccine and the MMR vaccine. And you guys have probably seen this data, is that often — that the incidence of disease is going down even before the vaccine had been started.
“When we look at the risk and we talk about the risk of of, let’s say measles, many of those risks of not of getting measles without having a vaccine was in the 1960s. We take care of children much differently now. our ability to have pediatric hospitals, children’s hospitals, pediatric ICUs, how we look at the whole gamut of how we can treat measles is different. So that’s a, that’s something that comes into play. Are we looking at real today data with our population?”
Yes, we are. Because the rest of us realize that it’s probably better that kids do not get sent to pediatric ICUs with polio and measles, even if they are better now than they were in the 1950s and ‘60s. It also seems worth mentioning the expense and the lack of access to healthcare. Hospitals have actually been closing pediatric ICUs because they’re not profitable, and rural areas especially are experiencing a critical shortage at the moment.
But hey! Maybe if we bring more infectious diseases back, they’ll become profitable again!
The other thing to note here is that, although there have certainly been a lot of medical advancements since the vaccine was first introduced, there still is not a cure for polio or for the lifelong health issues caused by it — which is why poor Martha Lillard is still in an iron lung requiring 24/7 around-the-clock care.
The American Medical Association is not so keen on the idea of bringing polio back, and, on Monday, released a statement to that effect.
“The American Medical Association is deeply alarmed by efforts to weaken long-standing evidence-based vaccine recommendations, including suggestions that polio vaccination should seemingly not be routinely recommended to patients.
“This is not a theoretical debate—it is a dangerous step backward.
“Vaccines have saved millions of lives and virtually eliminated devastating diseases like polio in the United States. There is no cure for polio. When vaccination rates fall, paralysis, lifelong disability, and death return. The science on this is settled.
“Moving away from routine immunizations, which involves discussions between clinicians and patients, does not increase freedom—it increases suffering. It puts children, families, and entire communities at risk and undermines the public health protections that generations of Americans depend on.
“The AMA strongly urges policymakers to follow the evidence and the expertise of physicians and public health professionals. Weakening vaccine recommendations will cost lives, and that is a price our nation should not be willing to pay.”
The idea that polio would just stay gone if people stopped immunizing against it is absurd. There are still cases of wild poliovirus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, precisely because they have low vaccination rates (thanks to the Taliban). There have also been cases, in countries where people have recently started not vaccinating against it (and the aforementioned 2022 case here in the United States), in which the unimmunized have contracted the mutated, vaccine-derived strains of polio from those who have been immunized against it.
On the podcast, Milhoan explained that what ACIP is doing “is returning individual autonomy to the first order — not public health, but individual autonomy, to the first order,” which one might suggest defeats the point of having an advisory committee on vaccines to begin with, or any public health committees at all. He supports this “individualistic” approach, in which people decide for themselves, based on their “individual” risks whether or not to get vaccinated, as “opposed to what was sort of more of a heavy-handed authoritarian thought of the vaccine schedule that led to mandates that if you didn’t have this set of vaccines exactly how they were prescribed then you didn’t get into school.”
That’s not “authoritarian.” Not allowing kids into public schools without immunizations is not a punishment for being naughty, it’s a safety measure meant to protect the other students and to protect those who can’t get certain vaccines they are too young for or for actual medical reasons. This approach actually takes away the autonomy of those children, who must now be at risk for deadly viruses because some other child’s parent believes stupid things. Just like how the COVID vaccine gave us our freedom to go places without worrying we might die or cause someone else to die. Because some of us actually do care about the latter.
Oh, hey! You wanna know what really kills autonomy? Having to live in an iron lung and requiring 24/7 care for the rest of your life. Big, big autonomy killer, that one. Or dying. It’s definitely very bad for one’s autonomy to be dead.
“You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the US market,” CEO Stephane Bancel told Bloomberg TV at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.
So now, not only are these “individuals” putting everyone else’s health at risk by refusing to get the vaccines we currently have, they’re actively taking away vaccines the rest of us could have in the future.
These next three years cannot go by fast enough (for those of us who survive it).
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Doctors face-palm as RFK Jr.’s top vaccine advisor questions need for polio shot
Kirk Milhoan’s comments come as federal vaccine policy slides to insignificance
by Beth Mole, Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.
Kirk Milhoan, James Pagano, and Robert Malone are seen during a meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on September 18, 2025 in Chamblee, Georgia.
Credit: Getty | Elijah Nouvelage
Kirk Milhoan, who was named chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in December, appeared on the aptly named podcast “ Why Should I Trust You .” In the hour-long interview, Milhoan made a wide range of comments that have concerned medical experts and raised eyebrows.
Early into the discussion, Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist, declared, “I don’t like established science,” and that “science is what I observe.” He lambasted the evidence-based methodology that previous ACIP panels used to carefully and transparently craft vaccine policy.
While arguing that he was not anti-vaccine, he said he was merely focused on safety and made false claims about vaccine risks, a common trope among anti-vaccine activists. He falsely linked vaccines to allergies, asthma, and eczema and repeated a claim, without evidence, that COVID-19 vaccines killed children. When pressed by the podcast hosts, he revealed that he put the risk of vaccine side effects on the same footing as the risks from the diseases the shots prevent—despite the fact that disease risks are often orders of magnitude larger than the tiny risks from vaccines.
In response to pushback from the hosts, Milhoan objected to the idea that the measles and polio vaccines reduced the spread of those diseases. He went further, questioning the need for those vaccines as well as routine vaccinations, generally.
“I think also as you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then,” he said, referring to the time before the first polio vaccines were developed in the 1950s. “Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different. And so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.”
He then pondered out loud what would happen if people stopped getting vaccinated. “If we take away all of the herd immunity, then does that switch, does that teeter-totter switch in a different direction?” he asked.
Backlash
In a statement, AMA Trustee Sandra Adamson Fryhofer blasted the question. “This is not a theoretical debate—it is a dangerous step backward,” she said. “Vaccines have saved millions of lives and virtually eliminated devastating diseases like polio in the United States. There is no cure for polio. When vaccination rates fall, paralysis, lifelong disability, and death return. The science on this is settled.”
Fryhofer also took aim at Milhoan’s repeated argument that the focus of vaccination policy should move from population-level health to individual autonomy. Moving away from routine immunizations, which include discussions between clinicians and patients, “does not increase freedom—it increases suffering,” she said, adding that the weakening of recommendations “will cost lives.”
Overall, Milhoan’s comments only further erode the relevance of ACIP and federal vaccine policy among the medical community and states. According to a KFF policy brief , 27 states and Washington, DC, have already announced they will not follow current CDC vaccine recommendations, which Kennedy dramatically overhauled earlier this month without even consulting the ACIP. Instead, the majority of states are relying on previous recommendations or recommendations made within states or by medical organizations.
On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced the 2026 update to its childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule , which it has held up as an alternative to the CDC’s schedule and has been widely embraced by pediatricians. In the announcement, AAP noted that 12 other medical organizations have endorsed the schedule, including the AMA, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.
The AAP’s updated recommendations are largely the same as the schedule from last year, but it is significantly different from the CDC’s recommendations, which “depart from longstanding medical evidence and no longer offer the optimal way to prevent illnesses in children,” the AAP said.
“The AAP will continue to provide recommendations for immunizations that are rooted in science and are in the best interest of the health of infants, children and adolescents of this country,” AAP President Andrew Racine said in the announcement.
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I like the blog roundup you've been posting with all your seeds .
Thanks. It's work... but I'm finding ways to speed it up.
There's s-o-o-o-o much happening.
According to the stories my dad has told me of his youth and time spent as a patient in a polio ward yes it would be a bad time
My sister, now 80, spent six months in an iron lung.
That's bad, while dad spent 8 months in the ward he only lost the use of his left arm. Many others that were there lost their lives