The clown car that is America’s public health under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has gotten wackier. The newest chair of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, Kirk Milhoan, is a pediatric cardiologist and preacher with a history of making incredible claims about the dangers of vaccination.
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that Milhoan would be taking over the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Among other things, Milhoan has argued that covid-19 vaccines cause cancer and miscarriages. Milhoan and the other members of ACIP are expected to weigh in on the childhood vaccine schedule and the hepatitis B vaccine this week.
The antivax preacher
Milhoan was first appointed to ACIP this September, as part of the second round of new members inducted under the reign of RFK Jr. as HHS chief. Infamously, Kennedy unilaterally dismissed all 17 members of the previous ACIP without any notice earlier this year. He’s replacing Martin Kulldorff as ACIP chair, who was appointed Monday as chief science officer for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at HHS.
Like many of the new ACIP members, Milhoan has a steady track record—to put it lightly—of making unsupported statements about the health risks of vaccination.
As recently as October, while speaking at a church in Texas, Milhoan claimed that the covid-19 vaccines are contaminated with “naked DNA” and that this contamination has caused an increase in cancer cases and miscarriages. During that same speech, he also likened the recording of people’s covid-19 vaccination history during the pandemic to the armbands Jewish residents in German-occupied areas were forced to wear during the Holocaust.
The idea that covid-19 vaccines cause cancer is a well-trodden conspiracy theory, though it’s one that’s gotten more support from the political right as of late. There’s no solid evidence for this claim, and in fact, some research this year has suggested the mRNA covid-19 shots can actually boost the effectiveness of existing immunotherapy treatments for cancer. Likewise, the vast majority of research has failed to find a link between covid-19 vaccines and miscarriages, while pregnant women are at greater risk of poorer health outcomes from catching covid-19.
The worst is yet to come
Unfortunately, reality is in short supply over at HHS these days. And Milhoan and the rest of RFK Jr.’s buddies at ACIP are set to make things worse for the country soon enough.
At this week’s ACIP meeting, the members are expected to vote against recommending the hepatitis B vaccine for all children starting at birth—a safe and effective measure that has dramatically reduced hepatitis B cases in the U.S. over the past thirty years, especially among children.
The ACIP is also scheduled to discuss the childhood vaccination schedule and whether it might be contributing to food allergies (another crank theory espoused by RFK Jr.) and other chronic ailments. The antivaccination movement has long sought to destroy the schedule, and the ACIP’s maneuvering during this meeting could be the first step in making that goal happen.
It isn’t just the ACIP that’s started to echo the anti-vaccine sentiments of Kennedy and his ilk. Over the weekend, a leaked memo from Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), revealed that the agency is planning to tighten the regulatory approval process of vaccines moving forward. As justification for this move, Prasad claimed the FDA had newly discovered at least ten deaths in children caused by the covid-19 vaccine. Outside experts have been skeptical about the claim, noting that no detailed data supporting the FDA’s purported discovery has been disclosed or submitted for peer review as of now.
Things are looking bad for vaccines. And it’s unlikely that we’ve come close to hitting rock bottom.
