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ELVIS, THE POLIO VACCINE, AND US  
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Charles Idelson
January 1, 2025
Medium
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_ In October 1956 the ascending rock idol lent his considerable
stardom to helping save lives by getting vaccinated against polio on
the Ed Sullivan show. Today an anti-vax fanatic with a celebrity name
is in line to be in charge of public health. _

Elvis vaccinated against polio on the Ed Sullivan show, October 1956,


 

Elvis Presley hardly seems a likely candidate for the pantheon of
public health heroes. But in October 1956 the ascending rock idol lent
his considerable stardom to helping save lives.

His little remembered role is a cautionary tale as incoming President
Trump advances a series of far right and unqualified appointees to
major public agencies. The most dangerous is likely to be conspiracy
theorist Robert Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services,
augmented by like-minded, perilous public health heads of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Federal
Drug Administration (FDA) and as Surgeon General.

Elvis vaccinated against polio on the Ed Sullivan show, October 1956

For a century, polio epidemics made it one of the world’s most
terrifying diseases
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A 1916 outbreak in New York City killed over 2,000 people; another in
the U.S. in 1952 claimed over 3,000. Children were especially
targeted, over 60,000 infected yearly, facing lifelong severe spinal
injuries requiring braces, crutches, and wheelchairs, and the dreaded
iron lung, an artificial respirator, or premature death.

Wealth and status proved no barrier, as evidenced by President
Franklin Roosevelt who was diagnosed at age 39 in 1921
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of his life. What was a safeguard was the first vaccine, developed by
virologist/medical researcher Jonas Salk
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The announcement [[link removed]] on April 12, 1955 by
University of Michigan School of Public Health scientist Thomas
Francis, Jr., who declared it “safe, effective, and potent,” was
greeted as a national celebration, spread rapidly over radio,
television, and wire services.

Parents lined up to vaccinate their young children, plenty did not.
Teen immunization levels stagnated at just 0.6 percent. Enter Elvis.
He agreed to go on the popular Ed Sullivan TV show, not to sing,
but to get publicly vaccinated
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viewed by millions. Vaccination rates among American youth soared to
80 percent in just six months. Overall annual cases of polio plummeted
within a year from 58,000 to 5,600. By 1961, only 161 cases remained.
After an oral vaccine followed, polio disappeared in the U.S.

Yet polio never vanished globally, especially in underdeveloped
nations, as in Africa, and in war zones, including in Gaza driven by
Israel’s decimation of public health protections during its
catastrophic assault. In 2022 the first U.S. case in the U.S. in
decades was reported
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State Department of Health.

_Trump mocks Joe Biden for wearing a mask to the first 2020
Presidential debate/Washington Post photo_

Defense against dangerous epidemic outbreaks requires constant
vigilance, and public support for full embrace of public health safety
measures, including vaccinations. The experience of Trump’s first
tenure is far from reassuring, especially his abominable failure in
the face of Covid-19, the worst global pandemic in a century which
ultimately cost the lives of over 1.2 million Americans.

Initial skepticism over the polio vaccine has a long antecedent in the
U.S., described early in the Covid pandemic by what _Los Angeles
Times_ writer Carolina Miranda
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termed “toxic individualism” and rugged individualism. It is
traceable to a virulent brew of misguided notions of individual
liberty
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undermine and sabotage the public good, or a commons of national and
community interest. Much of its roots are linked to structural racism,
as in the resistance to Civil Rights Movement measures, and continuing
today in white opposition to reforms such as expansion of health care
and other public programs, immigration rights, and other societal
benefits.

That history provides context for the eruption of the anti-vax,
anti-public health measures that exacerbated and prolonged Covid
suffering and death and seeded the ground for opposition to other
essential vaccines. It’s true, as medical ethicist Arthur Caplan
writes
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that much of “the damage to getting Americans to vaccinate has
already been done… There are almost no serious state mandates for
childhood vaccines. Parents who want to opt out are easily doing so,
as can be seen by the resurgence in measles
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cough
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Nearly 40% of teenagers are not up to date on the HPV vaccine even
as Australia
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on the verge of eliminating cervical cancer thanks to serious
immunization campaigns..”

Further, he adds “Democrats avoided vaccination as an issue this
election year because they knew that, post Covid, vaccination has
become something of a political third rail. Could Kennedy and Oz make
things worse — absolutely. But are matters already bad — sadly,
yes.”

THE KENNEDY-TRUMP THREAT

Yet Kennedy and his coterie of other department heads can make matters
much worse. With the imprimatur of a President already lionized by an
often-fawning base will likely discourage more resistance to vaccines
that can turn schools into major disease vectors and hasten the spread
of new epidemics sure to come.

Even in the wake of Covid, Kennedy, with his power as HHS Secretary
has said he would pause
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drug development and infectious disease research and shift its focus
to chronic diseases that do need attention but not at the expense of
combatting global epidemics.

Kennedy has also indicated a desire to shut “entire” FDA
departments, which oversee safety and effectiveness of prescription
drugs and vaccines. And he has threatened to purge FDA staff for
“aggressive suppression” of unsafe products and therapies, such as
raw milk, and discredited COVID treatments, including
hydroxychloroquine.

There’s his lurid, scientifically refuted linkage of vaccines to
autism and other conspiracies, such as his claim that Covid was
bioengineered to exempt Chinese people, already targeted by Trump
rhetoric that fueled hate crimes, and Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe
origin, reinforcing rightwing antisemitic bigotry.

And that’s not including his attack
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in drinking water
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promotes oral health, as cited in a letter 
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77 Nobel Prize winners opposing Kennedy, or his speculated doubt
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HIV causes AIDS and the effectiveness of AZT therapy.

ANTI-VAX CONSEQUENCES

Still, it is his fanaticism on vaccines that prompts the most alarm.

During the COVID-19 epidemic, Children’s Health Defense, a group
Kennedy founded and led, petitioned the FDA
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halt the use of all COVID vaccines. In a 2023 podcast
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Kennedy proclaimed there is “no vaccine that is safe and
effective,” and disputed CDC’s guidelines about if and when kids
should get vaccinated.

The implications are alone enough for a mass movement to escalate
pressure to block confirmation of Kennedy, and Trump’s nominees to
lead the CDC, CMS, FDA, NIH and Surgeon General who mostly share his
chilling views on vaccine safety. Multiple studies document what is at
stake.

The World Health Organization
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vaccines have protected 150 million lives over the past 50 years, and
that 100 million were infants. About 4 million deaths worldwide are
prevented by childhood vaccination every year
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than 50 million deaths can be prevented through immunization between
2021 and 2030. By 2030, it is estimated that measles vaccination alone
can save nearly 19 million lives.

In November 2013, University of Pittsburgh researchers issued a
similar study
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It documented that about 103 million cases of disease had been
prevented by vaccination since 1924. The disease with the most cases
prevented was diphtheria, 40 million cases. Second was measles, 35
million cases.

Globally, reported _Scientific American_
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measles vaccines, preserved 94 million lives over the past 50 years.
It cited a Lancet study
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published in October, 2024 that vaccines against 14 common pathogens
protected 154 million people the past five decades — at a rate of
six lives every minute. They have cut infant mortality by 40 percent
globally and by more than 50 percent in Africa. Throughout history
vaccines secured more lives than almost any other intervention.

_Lancet_ found that each life defended through immunization
contributed to 66 years of full health, without long-term linked to
disease. Vaccines impact nearly every measurement of health equity,
from improving access to care, to reducing disability and long-term
morbidity, to preventing loss of labor and the death of caretakers.

Writing in _Forbes_
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hardly a left-wing Trump critic, earlier this year, ER doctor/health
researcher Arthur Kellerman also cited the Pittsburgh and a Johns
Hopkins data of nearly 88 million cases of illness. In 1900, he wrote,
30 percent of deaths in the U.S. occurred in children under 5 years of
age. In 1999, they accounted for only 1.4 percent
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Vaccines played a vital role in this progress.”

Measles, a highly contagious childhood disease that can lead to
pneumonia and fatal brain swelling, declined rapidly after the first
measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. But, the CDC cites 16 measles
outbreaks [[link removed]] in
2024. Kennedy’s alleged role in promoting vaccine misinformation
during a deadly measles outbreak in American Samoa in 2019, which he
denies, has also been widely reported
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Unvaccinated families, writes Kellerman, “tend to cluster in
communities defined by faith, culture or political ideology. When a
highly contagious disease gets into such a community, an outbreak can
occur. We’ve already seen localized outbreaks of measles, rubella,
mumps, and pertussis.”

_New York Times archive_

In 2022, Kennedy’s attorney and close advisor Aaron Siri petitioned
the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine
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further study despite its long history of success.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who endured polio as a
child, has denounced the push
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undermine public confidence in proven cures” like the polio vaccine.
Only a “miraculous combination of modern medicine and a mother’s
love” saved him from paralysis he said in a statement. “The polio
vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of
eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence
in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,”
McConnell said.

Yet McConnell, and similar Republican critics have yet to publicly
oppose Kennedy and his similar malefactors of health (to borrow
FDR’s “malefactors of wealth” frame).

We can no longer count on Elvis to protect our children, families and
communities. It is up to the rest of us.

_Charles Idelson is senior communications adviser, National Nurses
United_

_Medium [[link removed]] is a home for human stories and ideas.
Here, anyone can share knowledge and wisdom with the world—without
having to build a mailing list or a following first. The internet is
noisy and chaotic; Medium is quiet yet full of insight. It’s simple,
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whatever you have to say._

_Ultimately, our goal is to deepen our collective understanding of the
world through the power of writing._

* RFK jr.
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* vaccines
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* Polio
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