Pro-Ivermectin, Anti-Vax Group Positioned to Influence CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee
New ACIP Chair Dr. Kirk Milhoan, who attacks mRNA vaccines, is affiliated with the Independent Medical Alliance.
The new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes vaccine recommendations, has ties to an anti-vax group known for promoting unproven treatments for COVID-19 and other conditions.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a shakeup: Martin Kulldorff would be leaving his post as ACIP chairman, which he’d held for less than a year. Kulldorff was one of several contrarians appointed to the committee in June by Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. after he’d fired all original 17 members. Kulldorff is set to take on a new role as chief science officer for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, which directly advises the secretary.
Buried at the bottom of the announcement was the name of Kulldorff’s replacement: Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a Hawaii-based pediatric cardiologist and pastor appointed to ACIP by Kennedy in September.
Since May 2024, Milhoan has been a senior fellow at the so-called Independent Medical Alliance, an anti-vax group originally known as the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. His wife and fellow physician is also affiliated with the group.
IMA is best known for its promotion of the anti-parasitic ivermectin as a treatment for COVID—and for continuing to endorse its use long after research has proved it ineffective for that purpose. Ivermectin was the second false COVID cure seized on by the MAGA movement, following the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine, which President Donald Trump touted as a pandemic quick fix as he sought to downplay the pandemic threat ahead of his 2020 reelection bid.
Milhoan has promoted both drugs, providing them to Maui patients during free house calls to treat and prevent COVID. In 2021, the Hawaii state medical board filed complaints against him but later dropped them.
IMA, which was founded in 2020 by former intensivists Drs. Paul Marik and Pierre Kory, has become a key player in the so-called “Make America Healthy Again” movement. It is closely allied with Kennedy, announcing its name change and rebrand from the FLCCC ahead of his Senate confirmation hearings and leading advocacy efforts in support of his appointment as HHS secretary.
Today, the group serves as a connection point between the world of anti-vax nonprofits and more traditional right-wing groups. The partners IMA listed for its annual conference earlier this year included the anti-public health Brownstone Institute, Kennedy’s former anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense, and the Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank behind the Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s second term.
ACIP Chairman Milhoan is one of two IMA affiliates serving on the vital CDC committee. Vice chair Dr. Robert Malone, an infamous anti-vaxxer, is listed as an IMA senior advisor on the group’s website. Celebrating the news of Milhoan’s promotion, IMA wrote that their fellow “represents the very best of medicine, and his leadership of ACIP will restore a patient-centered balance to the nation’s vaccine panel.”
It is unclear exactly what impact this week’s ACIP shakeup will have on the critical CDC advisory committee. Outgoing ACIP chairman Kulldorff was a COVID vaccine refuser and rarely served as a moderating influence on the anti-vax impulses of his fellow Kennedy appointees. At the June ACIP meeting, for example, he voted with the majority to recommend only flu shots without thimerosal, an organomercury compound used as a preservative in some vaccines that anti-vaxxers like Kennedy have falsely suggested causes autism. When the American Academy of Pediatrics blasted ACIP’s decision, Kulldorff accused the organization of being “pro mercury.”
The former ACIP chair had also expressed openness to delaying the hepatitis B vaccine for babies born to mothers not infected with the virus—something the new ACIP is poised to vote on this Thursday. The shot is currently given universally at birth to protect newborns against a deadly disease that can cause liver cirrhosis and cancer.
Milhoan is perhaps more extreme in his anti-vaccine views than Kulldorff. He has called the mRNA platform “our clearest enemy of health currently,” compared COVID vaccination efforts to the Holocaust, and made false claims that infection risk increases with each booster and that the shots cause cancer and miscarriages.
His past research on the COVID vaccines has been dubious. In April, the new ACIP chairman appeared on Sinclair’s National News Desk to promote a paper he’d published with prolific anti-vaxxer and former cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough about the risk of myocarditis from COVID vaccines. The condition is a rare side effect of the shots that occurs more often from COVID infection itself. However, the paper, published in an open access “medical journal” that lists McCullough as both its editor-in-chief and an editor, claimed that the shots had led to a 620 percent surge of myocarditis in young men.
IMA cited the paper in their anti-mRNA vaccine “Smart Moms Ask” campaign, which targeted parents and expecting couples with misinformation, including claims that the shots led to miscarriage and lower rates of conception. In May, Milhoan appeared on the pro-Trump One America News to discuss the initiative.
In August, Milhoan co-hosted a webinar for the group touting its new back-to-school “Parents’ Healthcare Bill of Rights,” a document featuring seven demands on topics from gender and sexuality education to food choices and vaccines. The first enumerated “right” was the “Right to Vaccine Autonomy.”
“Parents hold ultimate authority to decide on vaccinations for their children, free from school-based coercion including School Based Health Centers, misinformation, or threats of exclusion,” the document read. “This safeguards against industry-driven requirements that may overlook individual health risks and family preferences.”
Since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, vaccine hesitancy has been increasing as right-wing groups like IMA have worked to politicize public health. Uptake of routine vaccinations has correspondingly declined. This year alone has seen several children die from vaccine-preventable diseases.