Picture a child in an iron lung, their chest rising and falling only because a machine breathes for them. This was America in 1952, when polio struck nearly 60,000 children in a single year. More than 21,000 were paralyzed. Over 3,000 died. Families lived in terror, praying their children would be spared.
Today, we risk a return to those days—not because science failed us, but because we are abandoning it. This is not a movie, not a TV show, not a TikTok clip that ends when the screen goes dark. It is a slow-moving horror, unfolding in real time.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no longer a fringe figure. Now, as Secretary of Health and Human Services—chosen not for qualifications but for his famous name—he is dismantling the very foundations of public health. He fired the CDC director, purged the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, canceled $500 million in vaccine research, suspended clinical trials, and cut U.S. support for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Thousands of health employees have been laid off, some learning of their fate only when their badges stopped working. Over 1,000 HHS staff signed a letter demanding his resignation, calling his leadership “a danger to the public’s health.” Former CDC directors warn bluntly he is “endangering Americans’ health” by tearing down defenses built over generations.
Kennedy’s long record explains why. He has falsely claimed vaccines cause autism, insisted Wi-Fi radiation causes cancer and “opens your blood-brain barrier,” and suggested chemicals in water make children transgender. During COVID-19, he declared that vaccine mandates were worse than Nazi Germany: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland… the mechanisms are in place now that didn’t exist then.” Holocaust memorials and Jewish leaders condemned him. Yet these are not fringe remarks shouted at rallies. They are now embedded in the policies of the United States government.
The stakes are not hypothetical. In the early 1960s, before the measles vaccine, 3–4 million Americans contracted the disease each year. It killed 400–500 children and left about 1,000 with permanent brain damage annually. Smallpox killed hundreds of millions globally before its eradication in 1980. Tuberculosis, typhoid, diphtheria—all were once household fears. They were defeated not by political ideology but by research, vaccines and public trust. To abandon that trust now is to invite those nightmares back.
The world is appalled. Kennedy’s cancellation of mRNA funding was condemned by international scientists as a threat to health and progress. Global health experts warn that halting U.S. support for Gavi could cost hundreds of thousands of young lives, given the alliance has vaccinated more than a billion children and cut childhood mortality in half across many regions. When the United States walks away from science, it is not just America’s children who suffer—it is the world’s.
And yet, our leaders—those elected to protect and to serve—remain silent. Their silence is not strength. It is betrayal. In Alabama, the infant mortality rate is the third-highest in the nation. Maternal mortality is more than double the national average, with Black mothers dying at shameful rates. Since 2010, more than a dozen rural hospitals have closed, leaving vast communities without access to care. Childhood vaccination rates trail the national average by nearly 10 percentage points. These are not statistics on a page. They are funerals that never should have happened.
Leadership requires courage. What we see today is cowardice dressed up as power.
History offers inspiration. Abigail Adams, nearly 250 years ago, inoculated herself and her children against smallpox at great personal risk. Jonas Salk gave the world the polio vaccine and refused to patent it, asking, “Could you patent the sun?” They placed truth above fear and the public good above themselves. That courage defined America’s greatness.
We see that same spirit in Alabama’s institutions today. UAB leads the nation in organ transplantation, advances in cancer treatment, and infectious disease research. Auburn, Huntsville and Tuscaloosa contribute breakthroughs in genetics, aerospace medicine, and rural healthcare delivery. This is science in service of the people. And this is what is endangered when federal leaders replace knowledge with ideology.
History tells us of plague ships left to drift in harbors, untethered and deadly, their very presence spreading fear and disease. That is what we are watching now—a government turned into a plague ship, drifting without reason, poisoning its own people.
America’s greatness was never built by crowns, quacks or con men. It was built by those who trusted knowledge over superstition, courage over cowardice, and reason over fear. Today we face leaders who despise that legacy. Look at their actions, not their words. They are dismantling America piece by piece, undermining the very institutions that once made this nation a beacon of hope.
This is not leadership. It is betrayal. We cannot wake the dead—but we can still protect the living, if we have the courage to act before it is too late.
