Letter: Vaccines are among our greatest scientific achievements; reject RFK Jr.

The definition of vaccines, according to the World Health Organization (WHO): Vaccination is a safe and simple way of protecting you from harmful diseases before you come into contact with them. Vaccines train your body’s immune system to create antibodies, just as it does when your body is exposed to a disease, and these antibodies thus recognize and destroy that disease.

However, because vaccines contain only killed or weakened forms of germs like viruses and bacteria, or parts of viruses or bacteria, they do not cause that disease.

Vaccinations have been among us for at least a millennium, dating back to China. The early introductions consisted of inoculations containing cowpox, or even smallpox, which then immunized against deadly and widely disseminated smallpox. Ben Franklin, whose son died from smallpox, and George Washington both championed this inoculation and realized great successes. Gen. Washington’s adoption of inoculations helped propel the protected Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War.

Thus, vaccinations have been among the greatest scientific achievements of mankind, a nearly miraculous public health success for all people. Vaccines have saved billions of lives worldwide.

Yet, today, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the most prominent and outspoken anti-vaccination huckster, has been nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and thus to oversee the health and well-being of our entire nation. The HHS includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), our nation’s leading protector of our public health; the National Institutes of Health (NIH), perhaps the world’s foremost research institution; and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), tasked with reviewing and approving new drugs and vaccines. In addition, both Medicaid and Medicare, as well as the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), provide crucial health coverage for many tens of millions of Americans, from the very young to the elderly and the disabled.

Quite simply, vaccine denial and the dissemination of disinformation is unconscionable.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Mr. Trump’s previous FDA commissioner: “If RFK, Jr. follows through on his intentions it will cost lives,” and radically impact global health.

We, as retired Anchorage physicians with, cumulatively, hundred of years’ experience, and in concurrence with 72 Nobel laureates, believe that RFK Jr. is distinctly unqualified, and poses a very real threat to the health and well-being of the American people.

Therefore, we respectfully request that U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan reject the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

— Peter Mjos, Royal Kiehl, James Sprott, Robert Bundtzen, Tim Samuealson, Mary Stewart, David Sonneborn, Norman Wilder, Steven Tucker, Shirley Fraser, Harold Johnston, Patrick Nolan, Tina Tomsen and Mary Jane Moore

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