Philly scientists brace for a fight over vaccines and health policy with the Trump administration

Earlier this month, over a dozen health experts gathered on a Zoom call organized by the Philadelphia-based “Godfather of vaccines” to discuss a topic that was on all of their minds: the coming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Specifically, the threat the new administration could pose to public health, especially vaccine policy.

The meeting was organized by Stanley Plotkin, a titan of research who invented the vaccine against rubella, and spent much of his career in Philadelphia. At 92, the emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania didn’t want to watch his life’s work become undone by people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist Trump has nominated as his health secretary.

“I am concerned about the health of Americans,” Plotkin said in an interview. “I’ve spent my life trying to prevent disease.”

Those on the call ranged from health experts working at public health organizations and advocacy coalitions to parents. They spoke for roughly 90 minutes on Dec. 11 and will likely stay in touch.

“Our motive was to discuss what can be done to defend immunization, to defend the health of children and adults, for that matter, against the assaults that are likely to occur,” said Plotkin.

RFK Jr. wasn’t the only potential new appointment on their mind. Two days after the meeting, The New York Times reported that the lawyer who is helping RFK Jr. pick federal health officials petitioned the government in 2022 to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, and tried to limit the use of over a dozen others. Dave Weldon, a former congressman nominated to run the CDC, has been critical of the agency, and maintained that vaccines can cause autism (a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.)

At a news conference last week, Trump vowed to maintain access to the polio vaccine, but said he disagrees with vaccine mandates at schools.

During the call, they discussed how the second Trump administration might threaten public health — for instance, if officials decided to no longer offer the polio vaccine — and the most effective types of responses.

They didn’t get into details, said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who participated in the call. The group, which will likely meet again, determined that responses would be multipronged, and they would need talking points to inform the public of potential harm, he said. “I think we will meet periodically as necessary.”

There doesn’t seem much point in trying to block Trump’s health appointments, Offit noted, because even if someone could be blocked, Trump would most likely choose someone else just like them. “To block it is only to get the next bad guy,” he said.

Offit said he felt “very good” after the Zoom call. “It’s just so nice to see everybody on this call, because we know that we’re all sort of a similar mind, and we know we’re all about to fight the same war, and it just felt really good to all know that we have each other.”

Over his decades-long career in Philadelphia, Plotkin helped develop vaccines for rotavirus, rabies, Lyme disease, and cytomegalovirus. He invented the vaccine against rubella, also known as German measles. The last major epidemic of rubella in the U.S. — which took place in 1964 and 1965 — killed more than 2,000 newborns and led to 11,000 pregnancy losses and 20,000 birth defects.

According to the World Health Organization, vaccines have saved over 150 million lives in the last 50 years alone, including those of more than 100 million infants.

That’s progress that Offit, Plotkin, and many other scientific experts don’t want to see undone.

They know the fight is coming.

“Do I think that vaccines are about to suffer? You bet I do,” said Offit. “I think that you’re about to see a serious erosion, not just of people’s perception of vaccines, but the availability of certain vaccines.”

Offit also expects 2025 to bring a flood of misinformation about public health, given RFK Jr.’s embrace of false theories, such as claiming that vaccines can cause autism and that COVID-19 targets certain racial groups. “I think misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theories will rule,” said Offit.

He believes the turn toward misinformation is partly a result of the pandemic, when scientific advice led the government to shut down schools and businesses, then impose vaccine mandates. “That really rubbed a significant percentage of this country the wrong way.” Plus, amid an uncontrolled pandemic and limited knowledge, scientists made some mistakes, he added. “We weren’t always right.”

The end result, Offit said, is that many Americans now don’t trust scientists and scientific advice. “I think we’re entering an era now where science is losing its place as a source of truth.”

Restoring the public’s trust in science and expert advice could happen one of two ways, Offit predicted.

In the “good” way, the efforts of Offit, Plotkin, and similar-minded experts to combat misinformation start to work, and people gradually realize that vaccines are good for public health — similar to how it took a while for people to believe Galileo when he said the Earth revolved around the sun, he said.

The “hard way,” in contrast, involves watching diseases come roaring back. “Get to a couple thousand cases of measles, and you’ll start to see children dying of measles again in this country,” said Offit. “That will certainly wake people up.”