Doctors face-palm as RFK Jr.’s top vaccine advisor questions need for polio shot arstechnica.com/science/2026...

While arguing that he was not anti-vaccine, he said he was merely focused on safety and made false claims about vaccine risks, a common trope among anti-vaccine activists.

He falsely linked vaccines to allergies, asthma, and eczema and repeated a claim, without evidence, that COVID-19 vaccines killed children. When pressed by the podcast hosts, he revealed that he put the risk of vaccine side effects on the same footing as the risks from the diseases the shots prevent

—despite the fact that disease risks are often orders of magnitude larger than the tiny risks from vaccines. In response to pushback from the hosts, Milhoan objected to the idea that the measles and polio vaccines reduced the spread of those diseases.

He went further, questioning the need for those vaccines as well as routine vaccinations, generally. “I think also 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,” he said,

referring to the time before the first polio vaccines were developed in the 1950s. “Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different. And so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.”

He then pondered out loud what would happen if people stopped getting vaccinated. “If we take away all of the herd immunity, then does that switch, does that teeter-totter switch in a different direction?” he asked.

In a statement, AMA Trustee Sandra Adamson Fryhofer blasted the question. “This is not a theoretical debate—it is a dangerous step backward,” she said. “Vaccines have saved millions of lives and virtually eliminated devastating diseases like polio in the United States. There is no cure for polio.

When vaccination rates fall, paralysis, lifelong disability, and death return. The science on this is settled.” Fryhofer also took aim at Milhoan’s repeated argument that the focus of vaccination policy should move from population-level health to individual autonomy.

Moving away from routine immunizations, which include discussions between clinicians and patients, “does not increase freedom—it increases suffering,” she said, adding that the weakening of recommendations “will cost lives.”

Overall, Milhoan’s comments only further erode the relevance of ACIP and federal vaccine policy among the medical community and states. According to a KFF policy brief, 27 states and Washington, DC, have already announced they will not follow current CDC vaccine recommendations,