Polio Vaccine Questioned by Chair of CDC Advisory Committee

In a podcast interview released on Jan. 22, 2026, pediatric cardiologist Kirk Milhoan, MD, PhD questioned the need for the polio vaccine.^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7} Dr. Milhoan, who is chair of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), said:

As you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then. Our sanitation is different, our risk of disease is different and so that those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.^{1 2 3 4 5 7}  

Vaccination Should Be Optional. Individual Autonomy First.

Milhoan suggested that the polio vaccine, as well as other vaccines, should be optional rather than required. “If there is no choice, then informed consent is an illusion. Without consent it is medical battery,” he said. He emphasized that the role of ACIP now is to protect the informed consent rights of individuals when it comes to vaccination and other medical interventions.”^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7} He said:

[W]at we are doing is returning individual autonomy to the first order, not public health, but individual autonomy to the first order.^{1 2 3 4 5 7}

Milhoan described individual decision-making on vaccination as opposite to the previous “heavy-handed, authoritarian thought of the vaccine schedule that led to mandates that if you didn’t have this set of vaccines exactly how they were prescribed, then you didn’t get in school.”^{5 7}

According to Milhoan, decisions about vaccination should be made by patients in consultation with their doctors, based on what they determine to be the risks of a disease versus the risks of a particular vaccine, which he noted “are different for each person” and guided by “family history.”^{5 7}

Milhoan Singled Out for Vote on Hep B Vaccination

Milhoan was appointed to head ACIP on Dec. 1, 2025. Shortly after his appointment, he was fired from his job as pediatric cardiologist at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Cristi, Texas. The termination reportedly came after Milhoan voted with the majority of ACIP members to advise the CDC to stop recommending universal hepatitis B vaccination for newborns.^{8 9}

Driscoll has reportedly received $4.3 million in research payments in recent years from pharmaceutical companies, including Merck & Co., Inc., which produces the Recombivax HB hepB vaccine.⁸

In response to the firing, Milhoan’s wife, anesthesiologist Kim Milhoan, MD, wrote:

My husband has been fired because of public outrage that he would choose to participate in scientific medical debate (in service to his country, I’d add) and make recommendations based on the best available evidence, even if that required a modification of previous practice, in support of principles of medical ethics.

This is what we do as physicians every day of our lives. But for some powerful segment of the population, there appears to be consensus that some topics or conclusions are off-limits and they can pressure to harm careers and livelihoods of those with the courage and integrity to investigate whether the science is truly settled.^{8 9}

“I’m absolutely stunned,” said Kat Lindley, DO of the Independent Medical Alliance (IMA). “There is nobody with higher integrity and character, and who is more demanding of a scientific and data-backed approach to medicine than Dr. Milhoan. His removal simply because he is serving our nation on the most important vaccine advisory board is gross malpractice by his former employer, and utterly beyond comprehension.”⁹

Milhoan was subsequently rehired by the hospital.⁸

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