CDC’s ACIP: The Next Generation

On Sept. 15, 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) announced the appointment of five additional members to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). The new members—Catherine Stein, PhD; Evelyn Griffin, MD; Hillary Blackburn, PharmD, MBA; Kirk Milhoan; MD, PhD; and Raymond Pollak, MD—bring to 12 the total number of ACIP members appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.^{1 2}

On June 11, 2025, Secretary Kennedy named seven members to ACIP to begin the process of replacing the 17 member of the advisory committee dismissed two days earlier over concerns of “persistent conflicts of interest” that Kennedy cited had made the panel “little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”³

Drs. Stein, Griffin, Blackburn, Milhoan, and Pollack now join physician and biochemist Robert Malone, MD; biostatistician and epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, PhD; emergency medicine physician James Pagano, MD; MIT professor of operations management Retsef Levi, PhD; NIH scientist Joseph Hibbeln, MD; Dartmouth professor of pediatrics Cody Meissner, MD; and Vicky Pebsworth, OP, PhD, RN, board member and volunteer director of research and patient safety for the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC).³

In his acknowledgement of the five new ACIP members, Kennedy said that they “bring diverse expertise that strengthens the committee and ensures it fulfills its mission with transparency, independence, and gold-standard science.”²

New ACIP Members Have Stellar Credentials

Dr. Stein, who is a trained epidemiologist, is a professor in the Department of Population & Quantitative Health, Case Western Reserve University in, Cleveland, Ohio. According to DHHS, she has “more than two decades of research experience on tuberculosis and infectious diseases and 115 peer reviewed publications. She has collaborated extensively in genetics, biostatistics, and immunology.” Dr. Griffin is an obstetrician and gynecologist at Baton Rouge General Hospital in Louisiana. She comes with 15 years of clinical practice experience and was among the first robotic-assisted gynecologic surgeons in the U.S. and has led efforts to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality.”²

Dr. Blackburn is the director of Medication Access and Affordability at AscensionRx in St. Louis, Missouri. According to DHHS, Blackburn “leads initiatives to optimize medication access for underserved populations and improve affordability in value-based care” and previously “served as Chief Pharmacy Officer at the Dispensary of Hope, overseeing formulary and research strategy.” Dr. Milhoan is a pediatric cardiologist and former Air Force flight surgeon, with two combat tours in Iraq. He is currently medical director at For Hearts and Souls Free Medical Clinic in Kihei, Hawaii. His doctorate degree is in the “mechanisms of myocardial inflammation.”²

Lastly, Dr. Pollak is a surgeon, transplant immunobiologist, and transplant specialist. He has published more than 120 peer-reviewed papers and serviced as principal investigator transplant biology grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and many drug trials. He previously director of Liver Transplantation and Multiorgan Transplant programs at the University of Illinois.²

Media Knocks ACIP Members for Questioning Vaccines and COVID Policies

The professional credentials and experience of the five ACIP members appears to be impressive by any standard, and just as noteworthy as Kennedy’s first eight appointees. There’s certainly no shortage of doctors in the house. However, that’s not the impression that you get from reading corporate media articles about the latest appointees. The media’s focus is not about the qualifications of these individuals but rather whether they have gone along lock, stock and barrel with the mainstream narrative and policies on vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic.

CNN, for example, pointed out that Stein has been “critical of the nation’s response to COVID-19, including mask mandates and business closures.”¹ It added:

She co-authored a research paper on flawed models used during the state’s pandemic response for the group Health Freedom Ohio, which is affiliated with Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit founded by Kennedy.¹

MedPage Today reported that Stein wrote in January 2021 that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was “not the scary killer the media and government portray it to be” and claimed that the Ohio health department inflated the number of COVID cases in the state. It also reported that Griffin “testified against Louisiana’s move to add COVID-19 vaccines to the school immunization schedule” and said that “the average kid in Louisiana has a higher chance of getting struck by lightning than dying of COVID.”⁴

Milhoan, CNN noted, had appeared on a panel, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, on “injuries caused by COVID-19 vaccines.” While on the panel, he reportedly said the vaccines had “caused heart-related deaths and disability, and he cited a study from the Cleveland Clinic that he said showed that the more vaccines a person got, the more likely they were to get Covid-19.”¹

Another one of Milhoan’s seeming disqualifying sins was that he had opposed “vaccinating children against COVID-19, saying he believed the shots caused cardiac issues, and supported using ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID.” In addition, he is reportedly listed as senior fellow with the Independent Medical Alliance—a group of physicians and former journalists that “challenged COVID public health policies.” Not really much of a black mark.⁴

In one article, NPR quoted psychologist and professor of health behavior Noel Brewer, PhD as saying:

There are large gaps in the new ACIP’s composition in terms of their missing expertise on vaccinology. … These are folks who fundamentally do not understand vaccines in a deep way.⁵

It appears the underlying worry and criticism from the legacy media and “experts” tied to academia, government, industry and medical trade, who are desperate to maintain the status quo, is that this next generation of ACIP members have already demonstrated they are going to think rationally and follow the science instead of behaving like rubber stamping vaccine cheerleaders.

If you would like to receive an e-mail notice of the most recent articles published in The Vaccine Reaction each week, click here.