Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sept. 15 named five new members to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccines.
The new slate includes doctors and researchers who have been critical of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“ACIP safeguards the health of Americans by issuing objective, evidence-based vaccine recommendations,” Kennedy said in a statement. “Its new members bring diverse expertise that strengthens the committee and ensures it fulfills its mission with transparency, independence, and gold-standard science.”
After removing all existing ACIP members in June, in part because of conflicts of interest, Kennedy named eight replacements. One later withdrew from consideration.
The panel met in June. Its next meeting is scheduled to take place on Sept. 18 and Sept. 19.
Here are all the new members.
Dr. Kirk Milhoan
Milhoan is a pediatric cardiologist at Christus Health System, a senior fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance, an Air Force veteran, and cofounder of a Christian missionary organization called For Hearts and Souls.
Milhoan has spoken out about COVID-19 vaccines. He told The Epoch Times in June that he has seen an increase in myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, in children following COVID-19 vaccination.
“I don’t want to make it out like our hospitals are filled with these kids with myocarditis,” he said. “They’re not. But we saw something that was out of the norm. And that should make us curious and go, ‘Boy, they had a low risk. Did we do harm to them?’ And I think for the most part, we did.”
Milhoan said the vaccines should be removed from the market.
“Thousands of children are still getting a vaccine for a virus that really doesn’t cause them significant harm at all and has significant side effects,” he said.
Federal regulators recently narrowed clearance for the COVID-19 vaccines to the elderly and to younger people with risk factors that the CDC says put them at higher risk of severe COVID-19. The CDC has said COVID-19 vaccines cause myocarditis.
During a 2024 hearing held by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Milhoan noted data from the Cleveland Clinic indicating that the more doses one gets, the more at risk one is of contracting COVID-19.
“I’ve never seen a vaccine like this,” he said. “That’s not the basis of vaccines. They shouldn’t have what we would call negative efficacy.”
Milhoan also said it appears that some vaccinated people “are now becoming a spike protein factory that doesn’t stop,” referring to papers that have found persistence of the spike protein—a component of the COVID-19 vaccines and the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19—in vaccinated individuals.
ACIP is reviewing data on spike protein persistence following vaccination, according to a document dated Aug. 20.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, said in recent memorandums that “there is growing clinical evidence that spike protein, which is generated as a result of or in the course of vaccination, may persist for some time in a subset of individuals” and that the spike protein may be linked to so-called long COVID-19.
Milhoan was investigated by the Hawaii Medical Board after prescribing patients drugs approved for other uses, such as hydroxychloroquine, to COVID-19 patients, but the agency later closed its investigation. Milhoan is licensed in Hawaii and Texas, where he currently practices.
Dr. Evelyn Griffin
Griffin is an OB-GYN in Louisiana who has said her parents moved the family from Poland to Canada to escape communism. She later moved to the United States.
In 2022, Griffin testified at a state legislative hearing in support of a bill that would repeal a rule requiring students aged 16 and older to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination to attend school.
“What concerns me now is what I observe in my patients and my community … an increase in bizarre and rare conditions in my 20 years of medicine that I have not seen in the past,” she said at the time. “Rashes, tremors, seizures, blood clots, strokes, heart attacks in healthy, young patients.”
Griffin offered to give legislators her cellphone number and analyze any studies they presented to her for conflicts of interest. She also said researchers can skew data to present the findings they want.
“That’s not to say the vaccine is not working,” she said. “I’m just trying to illustrate the point that the results are in the eye of the beholder, and that is what we are seeing here. The statistician that chooses the data to analyze is the beholder.
“The average kid in Louisiana has a higher chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from COVID.”
In 2024, during an event titled Health Freedom Day, Griffin said medical students are taught to memorize the vaccination schedule and not question it.
“Unbeknownst to medical students and most of the public, there’s large involvement in sponsorship of the curriculum that goes into the medical school by big pharma,” she said.
When they graduate and start practicing, doctors trust the organizations, such as the CDC, that form the schedule and other health care policies, according to Griffin. She said she learned through research that there are financial conflicts of interest behind some of the research that undergirds the policies.
She told the crowd that she would advise them to always inquire about the risks, benefits, and alternatives for any medications or procedures.
“If you have a bad feeling about something—the way your doctor’s interacting [with] you, dismissing you, that kind of thing—get a second opinion,” she said.
She also said she tells her patients that it is OK to look for answers themselves on the internet.
Catherine Stein
Stein has a doctorate in epidemiology and biostatistics and teaches at Case Western Reserve University.
Stein wrote in a 2021 article that the statistics on COVID-19 resembled influenza and highlighted CDC data showing that people who had underlying health issues were the most likely to die from the disease.
She wrote in 2022 that COVID-19 vaccine mandates at universities must end because studies and other data indicate that the vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission.
She said that after examining ethical issues surrounding the mandates, she concluded that they “are coercive and impose an undue influence.”
Hillary Blackburn
Blackburn is a pharmacist who is currently the director of medication access and affordability at Ascension, according to her LinkedIn page.
She is also a podcast host and author of a book titled “How Pharmacists Lead: Answers from Women Who Are Leading, Succeeding, and Impacting Pharmacy.”
A review of Blackburn’s podcast and social media pages did not show her discussing COVID-19 vaccines.
Raymond Pollak
Pollak is a transplant surgeon with training in immunology, according to the Health and Human Services Department.
Pollak previously served as chief of liver transplantation and director of multi-organ transplant programs at the University of Illinois, the department stated.
He also worked with the United Network for Organ Sharing and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated when ACIP last met. The Epoch Times regrets the error.