Mitch McConnell condemns petition to revoke approval of polio vaccine by RFK Jr adviser

Senate minority leader contracted the disease as a child, before the wildly successful vaccine was licensed

US Senate minority leader and polio survivor Mitch McConnell has condemned attempts to undermine the polio vaccine after reports that a lawyer affiliated with Robert F Kennedy Jr - the health secretary pick for Donald Trump's second presidency - petitioned for the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of the vaccine.

In a statement reported by numerous outlets on Friday, McConnell, who contracted the disease as a child in 1944 - 11 years before the licensing of the world's first polio vaccine - said: 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."