Science
Column: The latest evidence that putting RFK Jr. in charge of public health would be a disaster
Polio came for 5-year-old Lynn Lane when she was visiting her grandmother in rural Indiana. Suddenly, her arms and legs became weak, and by the time she got to a hospital in Indianapolis, she was totally paralyzed and in respiratory failure. Lane spent the next several months in an iron lung.
“I don’t really remember too much about that,” Lane, now 73, told me Monday from her home north of Sacramento. “The only memories I really have are mainly at night. You could hear the swooshing of all the iron lungs.”
Lane’s family moved to Northern California a few years after her bout with polio, when she was 8. “That’s when I started noticing I was different than other kids,” she said. “I was in leg braces and had to learn to walk all over again.”
Her parents took her to Shriners Hospital in San Francisco, where she lived on and off for the next eight years.
“It was kind of like a boarding school, except with surgeries,” Lane said. “They did all these muscle and tendon transfers. I think I had maybe 15 to 18 surgeries. They transferred my quads from the front to the back so I could stand.”
In her early 40s, Lane was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, which afflicts between 25% and 40% of childhood polio survivors. It is similar to chronic fatigue syndrome and can range from mild to debilitating.
“I’m not in a wheelchair yet,” said Lane, who uses leg braces and crutches, “but it’s heading that way.”
The idea that anyone would question the polio vaccine now, she said, “makes me nuts.”
Last week, the New York Times reported that in 2022, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attorney and close advisor Aaron Siri had petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of the polio vaccine in use for the last three decades until its safety can be studied further against an unvaccinated control group. Kennedy, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary, is a longtime vaccine skeptic who spouts nonsense about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and a lot of other things. He is, in the view of many medical professionals, a danger to public health.
The Times’ report set off shock waves. Before Jonas Salk developed the first successful polio vaccine in the mid-1950s, the disease killed or paralyzed more than half a million people around the world each year. Many high-profile Americans who suffered from childhood polio, including Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and the actor Mia Farrow, immediately condemned the questioning of the vaccine. Kennedy and Trump were forced to reassure Americans that they support the lifesaving treatment.
As Kennedy met with Republican senators to shore up support for his nomination this week, he told reporters that he is “all for” the polio vaccine. Trump, in his first post-election press conference, insisted, “You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine. It’s not going to happen.”
And yet Trump also persisted in promulgating the oft-debunked lie that childhood vaccines are linked to autism, vowing to “look into” the conspiracy theory. Kennedy, he said, will “come back with a report as to what he thinks. We’re going to find out a lot.”
This fear-mongering is unconscionable. We already know a lot. In fact, we know more than a lot.
The autism question has “been studied to death in some ways,” said Richard Pan, a pediatrician and former California state senator who led the successful 2015 campaign to eliminate a “personal belief” exemption from vaccine requirements for the state’s schoolchildren.
“Do we know what causes autism? Not yet,” Pan said. But, he added, we do know what does not cause autism: the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, which was implicated in a long-since-discredited 1998 paper based on 12 cases by the defrocked English physician Andrew Wakefield.
“What will it take to convince Trump and RFK Jr. that a retracted 12-subject study with fake data was actually wrong?” asked Pan.
In any case, he added, blaming the vaccine is an “ableist” response to autism by some parents. “They don’t want to accept that their child is neurodivergent,” Pan said. “You want to say your child is broken and my life has been ruined and it’s the fault of Big Pharma or whoever.”
People who do not vaccinate their children, he said, are risking the health of the very people they are supposed to protect.
“You are playing with your children’s lives,” he said. “All of these adults have already been vaccinated.”
Although polio has essentially been eradicated in the U.S., it still exists in parts of the world and could certainly make a comeback here if enough people refuse to vaccinate their children. In 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that an unvaccinated New York man had contracted polio. And earlier this year, amid Israel’s war on Hamas, a 10-month-old child in Gaza contracted the virus, confirming fears about the war’s potential effect on preventable childhood disease.
As for the Kennedy advisor’s petition, Pan said, how could we withhold a potentially lifesaving treatment from children in a control group to test the efficacy of a vaccine that has been used successfully for decades?
“Sometimes a trial cannot be done safely or ethically, “ he said. “Are you willing to volunteer your child into the control group?”
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian
Our universe might be chock-full of cosmic wonder, but you can observe only a fraction of astronomical phenomena with the naked eye. Meteor showers, natural fireworks that streak brightly across the night sky, are one of them.
The latest observable meteor shower will be the Lyrids, which has been active since April 14 and is forecast to continue through April 30. The shower reaches its peak April 21 to 22, or Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.
According to NASA, the Lyrids are one of the oldest known meteor showers, and have been enjoyed by stargazers for nearly 3,000 years. Their bright, speedy streaks are caused by the dusty debris from a comet named Thatcher. They appear to spring from the constellation Lyra, which right now can be seen in the eastern sky at night in the Northern Hemisphere.
The moon will be about 27 percent full tonight, appearing as a thick crescent in the sky, according to the American Meteor Society.
To get a hint at when to best watch for the Lyrids, you can use this tool, which relies on data from the Global Meteor Network. It shows fireball activity levels in real time.
And while you gaze at the heavens, keep an eye out for other stray meteors streaking across the night sky. Skywatchers are reporting that the amount of fireballs is double what is usually seen by this point in the year.
Where meteor showers come from
There is a chance you might see a meteor on any given night, but you are most likely to catch one during a shower. Meteor showers are caused by Earth passing through the rubble trailing a comet or asteroid as it swings around the sun. This debris, which can be as small as a grain of sand, leaves behind a glowing stream of light as it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Meteor showers occur around the same time every year and can last for days or weeks. But there is only a small window when each shower is at its peak, which happens when Earth reaches the densest part of the cosmic debris. The peak is the best time to look for a shower. From our point of view on Earth, the meteors will appear to come from the same point in the sky.
The Perseid meteor shower, for example, peaks in mid-August from the constellation Perseus. The Geminids, which occur every December, radiate from the constellation Gemini.
How to watch a meteor shower
Michelle Nichols, the director of public observing at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, recommends forgoing the use of telescopes or binoculars while watching a meteor shower.
“You just need your eyes and, ideally, a dark sky,” she said.
That’s because meteors can shoot across large swaths of the sky, so observing equipment can limit your field of view.
Some showers are strong enough to produce up to 100 streaks an hour, according to the American Meteor Society, though you probably won’t see that many.
“Almost everybody is under a light-polluted sky,” Ms. Nichols said. “You may think you’re under a dark sky, but in reality, even in a small town, you can have bright lights nearby.”
Planetariums, local astronomy clubs or even maps like this one can help you figure out where to go to escape excessive light. The best conditions for catching a meteor shower are a clear sky with no moon or cloud cover, sometime between midnight and sunrise. (Moonlight affects visibility in the same way as light pollution, washing out fainter sources of light in the sky.) Make sure to give your eyes at least 30 minutes to adjust to seeing in the dark.
Ms. Nichols also recommends wearing layers, even during the summer. “You’re going to be sitting there for quite a while, watching,” she said. “It’s going to get chilly, even in August.”
Bring a cup of cocoa or tea for even more warmth. Then lie back, scan the sky and enjoy the show.
Where weather is least likely to affect your view
Storm systems sweep across the country in early spring, and some will be obscuring skies tonight. But there will still be plenty of areas with clear skies, particularly in parts of the central United States.
“The best spot is going to be in the Upper Midwest,” said Rich Bann, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center.
Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa will offer especially good sky-viewing weather and a beach on the Great Lakes could be a nice spot to look up at the stars.
But don’t expect to view the show from Chicago, as Illinois could see some thunderstorms. The weather will be better in the Northern and Central Plains, particularly the eastern Dakotas.
High, wispy clouds are expected over the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys and into parts of the Mid-Atlantic. But, Mr. Bann said, “you may be able to see some shooting stars through thin clouds.”
Clouds will be draped across much of the Southeast and the Northeast, though there could be some clearing in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. Remember, the meteors could be visible all night long. If you look outside and see clouds, try again later.
Catching the spectacle will be challenging across much of the West, particularly from Washington into Northern California, where a storm system is bringing rain and snow. That system will move east overnight.
There are likely to be some pockets of clear skies at times across southern Nevada, northwest Arizona and southwest Utah, Mr. Bann said.
Amy Graff contributed reporting.
WASHINGTON — Amid growing national security concerns, the FBI said Tuesday that it has launched a broad investigation in the deaths or disappearances of at least 10 scientists and staff connected to highly sensitive research, including four from the Los Angeles area.
“The FBI is spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists. We are working with the Department of Energy, Department of War, and with our state and state and local law enforcement partners to find answers,” the agency said in a statement.
The FBI’s announcement comes after the House Oversight Committee announced that it would investigate reports of the disappearance and deaths of the scientists, sending letters seeking information from the agencies involved in the federal inquiry as well as NASA, which owns the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, where three of the missing or dead scientists worked.
“If the reports are accurate, these deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security and to U.S. personnel with access to scientific secrets,” Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the committee, and Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) wrote in the letters.
President Trump told reporters last week that he had been briefed on the missing and dead scientists, which he described as “pretty serious stuff.” He said at the time that he expected answers on whether the deaths were connected “in the next week and a half.”
Michael David Hicks, who studied comets and asteroids at JPL, was the first of the scientists who disappeared or died. He died on July 30, 2023, at the age of 59. No cause of death was disclosed.
A year later, JPL physicist Frank Maiwald died at 61, with no cause of death disclosed.
Two other Los Angeles scientists are part of the string of deaths and disappearances.
On June 22, 2025, Monica Jacinto Reza, a materials scientist at JPL, disappeared while on a hike near Mt. Waterman in the San Gabriel Mountains.
On Feb. 16, Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair was fatally shot on the porch of his Llano home. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department arrested Freddy Snyder, 29, in connection with the shooting. Snyder had been arrested in December on suspicion of trespassing on Grillmair’s property.
Snyder has been charged with murder.
There is no evidence at this point that the deaths and disappearances, which occurred over a span of four years, are connected.
A spokesperson for NASA, which owns JPL, said in a statement on X that the agency is “coordinating and cooperating with the relevant agencies in relation to the missing scientists.
“At this time, nothing related to NASA indicates a national security threat,” agency spokesperson Bethany Stevens wrote. “The agency is committed to transparency and will provide more information as able.”
Representatives from Caltech, which manages JPL, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sun had barely risen over the Pacific Ocean when a small motorboat carrying a team of Indigenous artisans and Mexican biologists dropped anchor in a rocky cove near Bahías de Huatulco.
Mauro Habacuc Avendaño Luis, one of the craftsmen, was the first to wade to shore. With an agility belying his age, he struck out over the boulders exposed by low tide. Crouching on a slippery ledge pounded by surf, he reached inside a crevice between two rocks. There, lodged among the urchins, was a snail with a knobby gray shell the size of a walnut. The sight might not dazzle tourists who travel here to see humpback whales, but for Mr. Avendaño, 85, these drab little mollusks represent a way of life.
Marine snails in the genus Plicopurpura are sacred to the Mixtec people of Pinotepa de Don Luis, a small town in southwestern Oaxaca. Men like Mr. Avendaño have been sustainably “milking” them for radiant purple dye for at least 1,500 years. The color suffuses Mixtec textiles and spiritual beliefs. Called tixinda, it symbolizes fertility and death, as well as mythic ties between lunar cycles, women and the sea.
The future of these traditions — and the fate of the snails — are uncertain. The mollusks are subject to intense poaching pressure despite federal protections intended to protect them. Fishermen break them (and the other mollusks they eat) open and sell the meat to local restaurants. Tourists who comb the beaches pluck snails off the rocks and toss them aside.
A severe earthquake in 2020 thrust formerly submerged parts of their habitat above sea level, fatally tossing other mollusks in the snail’s food web to the air, and making once inaccessible places more available to poachers.
Decades ago, dense clusters of snails the size of doorknobs were easy to find, according to Mr. Avendaño. “Full of snails,” he said, sweeping a calloused, violet-stained hand across the coves. Now, most of the snails he finds are small, just over an inch, and yield only a few milliliters of dye.
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