MedPageToday Moving away from routine vaccines “does not increase freedom — it increases suffering,” says AMA Medical societies and patient advocacy groups slammed recent remarks made by the chair of CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) that included questioning whether all children should receive the polio vaccine.
In a wide-ranging interview on the Jan. 22 episode of the “Why Should I Trust You?” podcast, ACIP’s new chair, Kirk Milhoan, MD, PhD, discussed the need for and potential risks of vaccines such as those for polio and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), and how the pre- and post-vaccine environments have changed. “As you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then,” Milhoan said. “Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different. And so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.”
Existing herd immunity may lead some to wonder whether it’s better not to get a vaccine than to get a vaccine, he noted. “If we take away all of the herd immunity, does that switch? Does that teeter-totter switch in a different direction? So that’s how I would look at both the polio vaccine and the MMR vaccine.”