Remembering polio’s toll

On Dec. 12, The New York Times reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer and top advisor to Robert Kennedy Jr., petitioned the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine. Kennedy, nominated as head of the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), is an anti-vaccine activist, surrounding himself with likeminded people as he makes plans to lay waste to the HHS.

The move to ban the polio vaccine is appalling, misguided and scientifically unsound. To those who voted for Trump and his agenda, I urge you to talk to your parents or your grandparents and ask them what it was like in the 1950s, fearing an outbreak of polio; when swimming pools and summer camps were closed, when parents were afraid to send their children to school for fear of contracting polio, when pictures of children in iron lungs were in our newspapers. It was a dreadful, scary time. The introduction of the polio vaccine was hailed as nothing short of a miracle, and has saved countless lives and prevented lifelong disabilities. Losing access to the polio vaccine, along with other scientifically proven and effective vaccines against such childhood diseases as measles, whooping cough and diphtheria, should have us all rallying against this madness.

Joann S. Wood

Bethel

A history lesson for RFK Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s view on vaccines is alarming, if not downright dangerous. Vaccines are safe.

Some history for RFK Jr.: The rabies vaccine, conceived by Louis Pasteur in 1885, continues to save lives, including folks in this area who were bitten by a rabid animal a few years ago. This deadly virus leads to inevitable death unless the vaccine is administered promptly. The polio vaccine is extraordinarily safe. I received both the Sabin and Salk polio vaccines in the 1950s. Polio paralyzed one of my father’s best friends and ravaged the country before the vaccines.

More history: The mosquito-borne yellow fever virus killed 10% of the population of Philadelphia in 1793 and was responsible for 135 major epidemics, from the Pilgrims through the 19th century. A vaccine for the yellow fever virus that infected Angola in 2016 was effective in preventing massive fatalities, as this infection is 50% fatal in serious cases. Other mosquito-carried viruses include Zika, which caused more than 4,000 cases of microcephaly (babies born with tiny heads) in Brazil; Dengue which infects up to 100 million people every year, and Ebola in West Africa, which is 25-90% fatal. The 1918 Spanish influenza virus infected 30% of the world’s population, killing 40 million to 50 million people, and COVID is estimated to have killed more than 18 million people.

Effective vaccines exist for shingles, measles, mumps, polio, influenza, COVID and smallpox, and others. Newer vaccines that are available, or are being developed, include those for Dengue, West Nile, yellow fever, Nipah, SARS, MERS, Zika, Chikungunya, Ebola, HIV, respiratory syncytial, and monkey pox viruses. Even ticks can be viral carriers, as seen by the Powassan virus, first identified in Powassan, Ontario, and which killed two men in Cape Cod in 2017.

Please RFK Jr., Listen to the science: vaccines don’t kill people, viruses do.

Gordon W. Gribble

Lebanon

The writer is a professor of chemistry emeritus and a research professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College.