This week’s meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will be led by Kirk Milhoan, a physician and pastor who recently claimed that COVID-19 vaccines contained a contamination that causes cancer.
The upcoming meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will focus heavily on childhood immunization and hepatitis B vaccines, while also addressing issues around risk monitoring, the use of adjuvants and contaminants.
The ACIP meeting, scheduled to run from Dec. 4 to 5, will be led by newly appointed chair Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who was named to the post on Monday after his predecessor, Martin Kulldorff, was hired for another job inside the Health Department.
Milhoan, who is also a pastor, recently spoke out against COVID-19 vaccines. Speaking at a Texas church, Milhoan claimed, without evidence, that the shots are “contaminated” with ”naked DNA” at a level “almost a hundred times the level that’s allowed.” Naked DNA, in turn, “causes cancer,” Milhoan said in a recording of his speech uploaded to YouTube in October. At the same event, Milhoan said the vaccine leads to an 80% chance of miscarriage when given during the first trimester of pregnancy. This claim again went unsubstantiated. In an interview with Endpoints News, Milhoan did not deny the authenticity of the recording.
The entire first day of the ACIP meeting will be dedicated to hepatitis B, according to a draft agenda posted on the HHS website. Hepatitis B was also discussed at the panel’s previous meeting in September, where the group proposed moving the shot to one month after birth, as opposed to the current standard of a birth dose.
Despite the CDC’s own staff noting at the time that there is “no evidence” to suggest worse adverse event risk in newborns versus older infants and far lower rates of the disease in the U.S. compared to other nations, Committee member Vicky Pebsworth, regional director at the National Association of Catholic Nurses, argued that there are too many “gaps” in our knowledge about hepatitis B vaccines. Concluding that they are safe for neonates, she continued, “is perhaps immature.”
The CDC’s own website says that “scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the safety of hepatitis B vaccines,” noting that they produce seroprotection in 98% of infants vaccinated.
ACIP ultimately decided to postpone a vote on delaying hepatitis B vaccination to the December meeting.
The second day of the upcoming meeting will be more varied in its topics, with the panelists set to discuss the CDC’s vaccine risk monitoring system and the immunization schedule. In particular, the panel will look at the vaccination guidelines for children and adolescents—something the current administration has consistently targeted for review.
In May, for instance, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. removed COVID-19 vaccination from routine guidelines for healthy children. In August, he revived the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines—which had been dormant for nearly 30 years—to reevaluate the immunization schedule for children in the U.S.
ACIP is also set to discuss the use of adjuvants and the risks of vaccine contaminants during its Dec. 5 session.
