For his tireless work promoting the cause of childrens diseases, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being inducted into the Virus Hall of Fame today. The ceremony will feature light roadkill hors doeuvres, goblets of beef tallow, and a sewage plunge, and will include a memorial tribute to the parasitic worm that perished after eating a portion of his brain, but whose influence continues to be deeply felt.

In announcing the honor, the viruses praised Kennedy for being the first to buck the long-standing family tradition of fighting to better childrens lives: Where other Kennedys mindlessly rushed to broaden access to health care, advocate peace, or improve childrens circumstances, only RFK Jr. had the courage to take a step back and say, Lets hear the other side.

Its easy to love children and want whats best for them, a representative from the virus league explained. Its hard to look deeper and say, What about the virus in that childs lung? Whos looking out for it?

Hes been our guardian angel, a weeping respiratory syncytial virus added. We were on the brink of destruction, andhe spared us.

The disease-spreaders commended the secretarys work altering the schedule of childhood vaccines, noting that, although technically these are just guidelines, and states and families can still make their own decisions to vaccinate, anything that makes vaccination more confusing and difficult is a big win for viruses.

For offering a gracious home to a parasitic brain worm, even for a time, and for his indefatigable efforts to reintroduce the noble measle back into the wild, we here at the Childhood Diseases Consortium (CDC) are proud to claim Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as one of our own, a plaque reads. For his work making the lives of those scientists still trying to do their jobs at the Other CDC a living nightmare, and for the many ways, large and small, that he advances the cause of viral disease, we offer this small tribute to our most ferocious advocate and strongest defender. Whether he is repeating the words gold-standard science until they lose all meaning, traveling the world with a personal holster of sauerkraut, or doing something we think is intended to be a pull-up, the secretary will always know that were honored to have him in our corner. Wherever we go, whoever we touch, we feel were carrying on his legacy.

The evening was to feature a performance by a childrens choir, but too many of them are reportedly under the weather.