MedPageToday The CDC committee that helps shape U.S. vaccine policy is now chaired by a pediatric cardiologist who has opposed vaccinating children against COVID-19, and attributed miscarriages, cardiovascular disease, and other health problems to the vaccines without evidence.
The shake-up that resulted in Kirk Milhoan, MD, PhD, leading the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has stirred concern among public health experts ahead of this week’s pivotal discussion and vote on the hepatitis B vaccine birth-dose recommendation. “We have chosen someone who is not qualified to really lead a comprehensive discussion of vaccines,” Kathryn Edwards, MD, a former ACIP member and professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, told MedPage Today.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who earlier this year dismissed the entire 17-member ACIP panel and replaced them with a smaller group, announced this week that former chair Martin Kulldorff, PhD, would leave the committee for a role at HHS and that Milhoan would succeed him.