RFK Jr.'s lawyer once asked the FDA to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine

 A lawyer affiliated with President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the country’s top heath agency has petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of the polio vaccine used in the United States.

The lawyer, Aaron Siri, filed the petition in 2022 on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN, a nonprofit that challenges the safety of vaccines and vaccine mandates. Siri has been working closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a vaccine skeptic and Trump’s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services — to choose officials to serve in the incoming administration. He was also Kennedy’s personal lawyer during his own presidential campaign.

“The FDA is continuing to review the petition,” an agency spokesperson said in an email to CNN on Friday, adding that it will eventually issue a response, but there is no timetable for its completion.

The petition and Kennedy’s affiliation with the lawyer who filed it were first reported by the New York Times. CNN reached out to the Trump transition team and ICAN for comment but did not get a response.

A warning from the Senate: If Kennedy serves as head of HHS, a role that requires Senate confirmation, he’ll oversee the FDA and could take the rare step of intervening in its petition review process.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, made an apparent warning to Trump’s health pick after the New York Times report, saying “even the appearance of association” with efforts to rescind the approval of the polio vaccine could imperil a nominee’s confirmation in the Senate — though he did not reference Kennedy by name.

Trump on vaccines: Trump told Time magazine in an interview that was conducted in late November but published this week that more research will get underway and that he would consider getting rid of some vaccines for children, “if I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial.”

But Trump has also praised polio vaccination: “The polio vaccine is the greatest thing. If somebody told me to get rid of the polio vaccine, they’re going to have to work real hard to convince me,” Trump said told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview aired Sunday.