Kennedy Attorney Aaron Siri Strikes Back Against Bogus Polio Hysteria

By Adam Garrie, The Kennedy Beacon and KB Staff

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, meets with Senators in Washington, DC, the media has launched yet another series of insidious and disingenuous hit pieces against the nominee.

The latest specific target of attack is Kennedy’s lawyer, Aaron Siri. A clutch of articles in legacy media claim that Siri, and by extension, Kennedy, are against the polio vaccine. The media has lapped up that narrative, failing to put it under pressure.

But Siri has written a strongly-worded op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that seeks to set the record straight.

“The mainstream media is deliberately stoking fear and outrage about vaccines in an attempt to derail Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services,” begins Siri. “I have been Mr. Kennedy’s attorney in several matters, including during his presidential campaign. The attempts to stoke fear are based on legal work I did for a different client, which I never discussed with Mr. Kennedy.”

Siri makes clear that neither he nor any of his clients advocated for eliminating any of the polio vaccines:

“Reports recently published in the New York Times and elsewhere mischaracterize the contents of three petitions my firm filed with the Food and Drug Administration from 2020-22 on behalf of a client, Informed Consent Action Network,” continues Siri. “One of these petitions related to IPOL, which is one of the six polio-containing vaccines currently licensed by the FDA. The petition wouldn’t affect the other five vaccines.”

Siri further states. “No one, least of all our client, wants anyone to have polio. The goal is simply to ensure that vaccines are subject to proper testing for safety and efficacy. The media falsely claimed the petition sought to eliminate all polio vaccines.”

Siri ends his editorial as follows: “We must be able to raise valid questions about vaccines without fear that anyone who deviates from the accepted orthodoxy will be smeared as a radical,” he writes. “There are many issues that divide Americans, but drug and vaccine safety should unite us. The media should take a second look at what vaccine-safety advocates are actually saying. Then we can have a scientifically informed national conversation about how to ensure that the medications we give our children are safe.”

Between 2020-2022, Siri represented the Informed Consent Action Network. One of Siri’s petitions on behalf of the group was made in relation to the Sanofi-produced inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), that was first administered to American children in 1990.

Like other polio vaccines, Sanofi's IPV is produced using modified monkey kidney cells.Siri’s petition called for a “proper trial” of the vaccine, following revelations from FDA documents that a clinical trial of the vaccine contained no control group. Furthermore, the petition sought a more lengthy safety review of the vaccine compared to the three days of post-injection review conducted prior to the introduction of the vaccine to the general public.

The FDA’s assessment confirmed that “deaths have occurred in temporal association after vaccination,” although the FDA was unable to draw a conclusion regarding a causal link between vaccination and these deaths.

Siri’s petition sought extensive review to determine whether or not this vaccine was safe. Noted NIH whistleblower, Dr. Bernice Eddy, raised similar concerns about the more well known Salk inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) when she discovered the potentially carcinogenic SV40 (Simian Virus 40) virus in batches of the widely distributed vaccine.

This is the extent of Siri’s involvement in legal petitions surrounding the Sanofi vaccine. Other petitions Siri filed on behalf of his client related to insufficient clinical trials of two hepatitis B vaccines. A third and final petition sought clarification from the FDA on the presence of potentially toxic levels of aluminum adjuvant in 10 childhood vaccines.

While the media attempts “gotcha” journalism against Siri and by extrapolation, against Kennedy, the central issue at stake is whether or not the medications taken by millions of Americans are safe. The only way to ensure that is through rigorous testing, through gold standard science. That’s what Bobby Kennedy is advocating for, and that’s what he will undoubtedly require as head of HHS.