Doctors face-palm as RFK Jr.’s top vaccine advisor questions need for polio shot

He then thought out loud about what would happen if people stopped getting vaccinated. “If we remove all herd immunity, does that change, does that seesaw change in a different direction? » he asked.

Backlash

In a statement, WADA administrator Sandra Adamson Fryhofer blasted the issue. “This is not a theoretical debate, it is a dangerous step backwards,” she said. “Vaccines have saved millions of lives and virtually eliminated devastating diseases like polio in the United States. There is no cure for polio. When vaccination rates fall, paralysis, permanent disability and death return. The science on this is established.”

Fryhofer also took aim at Milhoan’s repeated argument that vaccination policy should shift from population-level health toward individual autonomy. Moving away from routine vaccinations, which include discussions between clinicians and patients, “does not increase freedom – it increases suffering,” she said, adding that weakening the recommendations “will cost lives.”

Overall, Milhoan’s comments have only further eroded the relevance of ACIP and federal vaccine policy within the medical community and states. According to a KFF policy brief, 27 states and Washington, D.C., have already announced that they will not follow the CDC’s current vaccine recommendations, which Kennedy radically revised earlier this month without even consulting the ACIP. Instead, the majority of states rely on previous recommendations or recommendations made within states or by medical organizations.

On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced the 2026 update to its immunization schedule for children and adolescents, which it presented as an alternative to the CDC schedule and which has been widely adopted by pediatricians. In the announcement, the AAP noted that 12 other medical organizations have endorsed the schedule, including the AMA, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

The AAP’s updated recommendations are largely the same as last year’s recommendations, but they are significantly different from the CDC’s recommendations, which “depart from long-standing medical evidence and no longer provide the optimal way to prevent illness in children,” the AAP said.

“The AAP will continue to provide immunization recommendations that are science-based and in the best interest of the health of this country’s infants, children, and adolescents,” AAP President Andrew Racine said in the release.