By Leah Douglas<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) – The chair of a U.S. government vaccine advisory panel questioned broad vaccine recommendations for polio and other childhood diseases and said promoting \u200bindividual choice, not public health, is the key aim of the panel, drawing a rebuke \u200con Friday from the nation’s top doctors group.<\/p>\n
Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who was named chair of the Centers for Disease \u200cControl and Prevention’s outside Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in December, made the comments in a Thursday interview on the podcast, “Why Should I Trust You?”<\/p>\n
Vaccination against some diseases, like polio, could be reconsidered given advances in medical care, said Milhoan, who joined the committee after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a \u2060longtime anti-vaccine activist, fired all previous \u200cmembers in June.<\/p>\n
“Our sanitation is different, our risk of disease is different. And so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile, of \u200dtaking a risk for a vaccine or not,” he said.<\/p>\n
Milhoan did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Polio, a disabling and life-threatening disease, has been eradicated in many parts of the world but still circulates. The CDC currently \u200brecommends that all children receive the vaccine.<\/p>\n
The American Medical Association said in a statement that it \u200cwas “deeply alarmed” by Milhoan’s comments.<\/p>\n
“This is not a theoretical debate \u2013 it is a dangerous step backward,” the group said.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Kennedy have moved quickly to overhaul federal vaccine policy, despite a lack of scientific evidence for the changes.<\/p>\n
Experts have said the efforts could expose more children to harmful viruses.<\/p>\n
INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY<\/p>\n
Milhoan said the committee aims to prioritize “not public health, but individual autonomy” and that vaccine \u2060decisions should be made by patients and doctors, not by \u200bmandate.<\/p>\n
U.S. schools require vaccination against certain illnesses, including polio and \u200bmeasles, based on state requirements. Most states have typically aligned those with the CDC’s broad recommendations.<\/p>\n
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at \u200dBaylor College of Medicine and \u2060co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, said most medical experts now disregard the committee’s opinions.<\/p>\n
“It’s a discredited committee,” he said.<\/p>\n
Milhoan is listed as a senior fellow \u2060on the website of the Independent Medical Alliance, which backed Kennedy for health secretary and has promoted controversial and unproven \u200cmedical treatments, like using the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Leah Douglas in \u200cWashington; editing by Caroline Humer and Rosalba O’Brien)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Leah Douglas WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) – The chair of a U.S. government vaccine advisory panel questioned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[90742,204029,103703,23715,204028,97,204031,204026,97085,204030,5599,788,204027],"class_list":["post-429726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-advisory-committee-on-immunization-practices","tag-advisory-panel","tag-american-medical-association","tag-centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention","tag-childhood-diseases","tag-health","tag-health-secretary","tag-individual-choice","tag-kirk-milhoan","tag-pediatric-cardiologist","tag-public-health","tag-robert-f-kennedy-jr","tag-vaccine-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}