As vaccine policy uncertainty reaches a new level in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC’s) team of vaccine advisors is set to deliberate later this week on childhood immunizations under a new chairman.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which was overhauled and repopulated by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the summer, is set to meet Dec. 4 and Dec. 5.
On the agenda (PDF) is a vote on hepatitis B vaccines plus discussions on “vaccine safety” and “the childhood and adolescent immunization schedule,” according to a Federal Register notice.
The upcoming meeting won’t be chaired by Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., who was recruited to the overhauled panel back in June. As it turns out, Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist, is moving on to different pastures within HHS, taking up a role as the new chief science officer for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), according to a Dec. 1 announcement. The ASPE acts as an “in-house think tank” and the principal policy advisor to the HHS secretary, RFK Jr.
RFK Jr., who said he's pleased to welcome Kulldorff to the team to “help develop bold, evidence-based policies to Make America Healthy Again,” credited the former ACIP chairman with transforming the panel from “a rubber stamp into a committee that delivers gold-standard science for the American people,” RFK Jr. said in the HHS announcement.
Stepping up the plate as chairman of the ACIP is Kirk Milhoan, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric cardiologist and former U.S. Air Force flight surgeon. Milhoan, one of five new ACIP panelists added to the roster in September, is a senior fellow with the Independent Medical Alliance (IMA) who specializes in treating patients with long COVID and “vaccine-related cardiovascular toxicity,” according to his IMA bio.
The organization is an outspoken critic of mRNA vaccines and says it had a hand in HHS’ May removal of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from the recommended immunization schedules for children and pregnant women.
Milhoan considers the mRNA platform “the biggest threat to humanity right now,” he said during an October Q&A at a Texas church. The new ACIP chairman, speaking on the “risks” of COVID vaccination, went on to claim that women who receive COVID-19 vaccines in their first trimester “have an 80% chance of miscarrying,” data which he says were “hidden.”
Recent and prior studies do not reflect any such link between miscarriage and COVID vaccination.
Childhood vaccine deliberations
Kicking off Milhoan’s first meeting as chairman this week will be an update from ACIP work groups, the draft agenda notes. The committee houses 12 active subgroups, known as workgroups, that are charged with reviewing relevant data to help inform the decisions of the panel’s voting members. Given the context of the upcoming deliberations, it’s likely that ACIP’s newest work group, the Childhood and Adolescent Immunization Schedule workgroup, will have a prominent role in the meeting.
That work group (PDF) was proposed in June and specifically reviews considerations such as the “timing and order” of different vaccines and the safety of vaccine ingredients.
It’s a topic that falls in line with RFK Jr.’s continued pledge to investigate childhood vaccination schedules as a potential cause of the “drastic rise in chronic disease,” but one that has already drawn concern from other outside experts. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for one, pushed back against changes to the childhood immunization schedule considering that the vaccines have been “tested extensively,” the group pointed out in an October report.
Under RFK Jr.’s directive of using “evidence-based medicine when making vaccine recommendations,” as Kulldorff put it in his first meeting as chairman in June, the committee’s guidance has already formed cracks in long-established vaccine practice. After recommending against the use of flu shots that contain the preservative thimerosal, the ACIP most recently shook up previous guidance for mumps, measles, rubella and varicella (MMRV), voting not to recommend Merck’s combined MMRV vaccine for any recipient under 4 years old.
At the September meeting, the ACIP was scheduled to vote on whether to uphold universal hepatitis B vaccination recommendations for infants at birth. After discussion around moving the first dose of the vaccine from birth to 30 days of age, the question was tabled until the following day before it was ultimately scrapped.
As it stands, the first of three doses of the hepatitis B vaccine is recommended for all infants at birth, guidance that has stood since the 1990s.
The upcoming ACIP meeting comes shortly after an official at the FDA, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Vinay Prasad, M.D., wrote to colleagues that “COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children,” calling it a “profound revelation.” The message came in a Friday email to FDA staffers, but experts have said the claim requires more scrutiny.
Still, Prasad said the FDA planned to take “swift action” in response to the “new safety concern” and will “direct vaccine regulation towards evidence-based medicine,” he added in the email.