Photo illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images, House Judiciary GOP/Youtube

Ever since Trump hired real-life conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and promised to let him “go wild” on public health issues, there has been a palpable sense of fear. And it only gets worse: On Friday it’s New York Just reported that Kennedy’s even more aggressive anti-vaxx lawyer Aaron Siri – a man who has petitioned the FDA to revoke the polio vaccine’s approval – is apparently helping him select federal health officials for the new administration.

Who is Siri anyway, other than a man who will make FDR turn in his grave? A close adviser to Kennedy who represented him during his presidential campaign, Siri is a partner at the New York-based law firm Siri & Glimstad, where he oversees about 40 professionals working on vaccination policy and regularly challenges “industry misconduct and government overreach.” scolds. ” His resume includes helping clients circumvent vaccination requirements and convincing a California judge to rule against requiring COVID vaccinations in San Diego public schools. In 2022, Siri filed a polio vaccine petition on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), a nonprofit organization that describes itself as an advocate for “medical freedom.” In his petition, Siri argued that since a nationwide vaccination campaign in the 1950s, the FDA has not conducted sufficient safety studies on the vaccine that protects Americans from a virus that can cause lifelong paralysis. Siri has also requested that the FDA’s approval of the hepatitis B vaccine be revoked and that distribution of 13 other critical vaccinations, including those that protect against tetanus, diphtheria and hepatitis A, be “suspended” and required their manufacturers to: Disclosing details about the risks of the ingredient aluminum, which researchers have linked to a small increase in asthma. (Not to mention the potentially fatal danger of actually contracting diphtheria, for example.)

Although Kennedy and Siri have independently stated that they have no plans to eliminate access to vaccines (“They want to get the vaccine – it’s America, a free country,” Siri testified before the Arizona state legislature last spring), have them Just reports that Siri accompanied him at the Trump transition headquarters in Florida, where the duo asked the candidates they are interviewing for key health policy positions for their opinions on vaccines. The Just also reports that Kennedy has “privately expressed interest” in appointing Siri as general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services. “I love Aaron Siri,” Kennedy said in a November podcast episode hosted by Del Bigtree, the founder of ICAN and former communications director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign. “There is no one who has been a greater asset to the medical freedom movement than he.”

If all that wasn’t scary enough, Trump said in his “Person of the Year” interview Time This week the magazine pledged to conduct “very serious testing” of vaccines and said it would eliminate those it believes are “not useful.” What could go wrong?