The head of the federal Vaccine Advisory Committee laid out the committee’s new direction in a podcast released Thursday, suggesting the public may want to reconsider its use of the polio vaccine, arguing that individual freedom should be the committee’s north star and citing the coronavirus pandemic as key to the committee’s thinking on health policy.

Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who became chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in December, also downplayed the established science on vaccines in a podcast interview, suggesting that policy goals rather than new research were the driving force behind changing recommendations in recent months.

In a wide-ranging podcast interview,why should i believe you?” Milhoan painted a more detailed picture than previously known about the committee’s strategy for recommending vaccines for children and pregnant people.

When asked why the committee revised existing recommendations, such as delaying the age at which some children are vaccinated against hepatitis B, Milhoan was clear: “Yes, because we were concerned about mandates. Because mandates actually caused harm and increased hesitancy.”

ACIP’s current members were hand-picked by Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last summer after he fired previous members for being influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. The new members, who included many Kennedy supporters and vaccine critics, then recommended removing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal from the influenza vaccine and giving the measles-mumps-rubella-varicella vaccine and chickenpox separately.

The group now plans to continue reviewing long-established recommendations for childhood vaccines and vaccines for pregnant parents.

this is, Miljoan’s first interview Since the ACIP meeting in December, when the hepatitis B recommendations were made, and since he became chair. After the December committee meeting, Milhoan was heard comparing committee members to “dolls on a string.”

Asked on the podcast if President Kennedy or his agency were the “puppet masters,” Milhoan responded by saying, “I was referring to what it’s like to be a member of a committee under a lot of pressure and threats.”

“Nobody said, ‘Kirk, this is what we want to make sure we get voted for,'” he said. But Milhoan said she and other members of the committee have received threats and that her son bought her bulletproof clothing for Christmas. “As you know, we as ACIP put every threat we receive into an email thread.”

Public health and individual rights

In an interview, Milhoan made it clear that he believes the new ACIP’s goal is to protect individual rights over public health.

“What we’re doing is putting individual autonomy back on the first level, not public health,” he said. Committee members have frequently questioned whether health care providers are adequately informing patients about the risks and benefits of vaccines. At one point, Milhoan criticized the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is suing the Department of Health and Human Services over vaccine policy, saying its members don’t have time to adequately inform patients.

“[Patients] “People should decide what the risk of the disease is, what the risk of the vaccine is (which varies from person to person), what their family history is, and make decisions from there, as opposed to the kind of coercive, authoritarian thinking about vaccine schedules that leads to mandates that you have to take this set of vaccines exactly as prescribed or you can’t get into school,” he said.

Asked about Mr Milhoan’s comments, an AAP official said vaccines were “just the latest step in an effort to sow doubt and confusion”.

“Our answer was and remains clear: talk to your doctor about which vaccines are recommended for your child. These decisions have always been made collaboratively,” said Sean O’Leary, chairman of the AAP’s infectious diseases committee. “The answer is not lopsided government intervention, but trusted engagement between parents and doctors.”

Overall, the fear of Covid-19 loomed large for Miljoan during the podcast. He frequently pointed to messages about the coronavirus vaccines, which he believes are made to be more effective than they actually are. He also said that as a pediatric cardiologist, he didn’t think about COVID-19 vaccines until they became mandatory.

“People couldn’t go to school, people couldn’t do this, people couldn’t get vaccinated, it was a real failure,” he said.

Milhoan also cited what a top Food and Drug Administration appointee said was evidence that at least 10 children had died. Death due to new coronavirus vaccinationcalling it a “very big death signal.” Vaccine experts are calling on the FDA to release the data. Until now, this has not been the case. Milhoan told the podcast host that he had seen the data, but did not elaborate on it.

At the same time, Milhoan questioned the scientific rigor of current public health decision-making. “I don’t like established science,” he said, adding, “Science is what I observe.”

He pushed back on co-host Brinda Adhikari’s claims that vaccines are proven to reduce the spread of polio and measles viruses.

“I focus on observable science,” he said. “What I’m trying to say is that when people use the word proven, there’s an emotion.”

He criticized the ACIP for not adequately considering the safety of vaccines, despite previously recommending that they be removed from the market due to safety concerns, and said the new committee had an “increased emphasis” on safety.

But he also criticized the vaccine safety reporting system available to the CDC, saying there is no new framework for evaluating vaccine safety.

“There are no new solutions. We’re working to figure out why it broke,” he said.

Questions about polio and measles vaccines

Asked about his thoughts on polio and measles vaccines, Miljoan doubts whether they are still needed. For nearly 40 years, there has been an international effort to eradicate the devastating poliovirus. Poliovirus remains endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan, with occasional introductions from those areas. But measles is endemic in parts of the United States, where infections are occurring at a rate not seen since the early 1990s.

“Also, looking at polio, I don’t think we need to fear that we live in a different time than we did back then. Our hygiene is different, our risk of disease is different, and so all of these things influence our assessment of whether it’s worth the risk to get vaccinated,” Milhoan said.

“When we talk about the risks of measles, for example, many of the risks of not getting measles if you don’t vaccinate were from the 1960s. We look after children very differently now,” he added.

Mr. Milhoan’s suggestion that both improved sanitation and reduced crowding may allow us to control these diseases better than before vaccines were introduced is also a common theme with Mr. Kennedy. One of Kennedy’s lawyers, Aaron Siri, had petitioned the FDA to revoke the approval of the polio vaccine before Kennedy’s approval.

Mr Milhoan also appeared to suggest that the ongoing outbreak would produce an updated estimate of the risk posed by measles.

“What we’re going to experience is the real-life experience of unvaccinated people when they get measles,” he said. “What is the incidence of new hospitalizations? What is the incidence of deaths?”

Milhoan said he doesn’t want vaccination rates to drop, but many public health experts point to changes in vaccine policy by health authorities. It will do just that by creating more uncertainty and confusion. For families who are unsure whether to have their children vaccinated. Earlier this month, HHS recommended an entirely new pediatric vaccine schedule, reducing the number of recommended vaccines. ACIP was not consulted about the change, but Milhoan said he was not offended.

“We don’t want fewer people to get vaccinated,” Milhoan said. “My hope is to have as low a side effect profile as possible to have the greatest effectiveness in preventing disease and preventing dire consequences.”