Health - Resources and discussion for everything health-related

Move is dramatic departure for advisory group under Kirk Milhoan, who says he doesn’t like the term ‘established science’

All vaccine recommendations are being reconsidered by the US’s vaccines committee, according to its top adviser, who in recent interviews slammed vaccination requirements for attending school and said vaccines should be taken on the advice of an individual’s doctor.

The stance from Kirk Milhoan, chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), represents a dramatic departure for the group tasked with making US vaccine recommendations for decades, signaling an increasingly hostile approach from the Trump administration to routine vaccines.

The childhood vaccine schedule is undergoing radical changes under the purview of Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and longtime vaccine critic. Some of these changes are being led by his handpicked vaccine advisers, several of whom have expressed outsized fears of the very rare risks of side effects of vaccines compared with the benefits of protecting against illness, hospitalization and death supported by decades of evidence.