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Kirk Milhoan, MD #quack #pratt statnews.com

Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who became chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in December,[…]downplayed established science on vaccines during an interview for the podcast and suggested policy goals, not new research, were the driving force behind changing recommendations[…]
When asked why the committee had revised existing recommendations[…]“Yeah, because we were concerned about mandates, and mandates have really harmed and increased hesitancy”

The current members of the ACIP were handpicked by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.[…]
In the interview, Milhoan clearly laid out what he sees as the goal of the new ACIP: protecting individual rights over public health

“What we are doing is returning individual autonomy to the first order, not public health, but individual autonomy to the first order”[…]
“[Patients] should be making the decisions on what the risks are of disease[…]” he said[…]
Overall, the spectre of Covid-19 loomed large for Milhoan in the podcast[…]
“People couldn’t go to school, and they couldn’t do this, and they couldn’t do this, to get a vaccine that has really been a large failure,” he said[…]
At the same time, Milhoan cast doubt on the scientific rigor of current public health decision-making. “I don’t like established science,” he said, adding “science is what I observe”[…]
Asked about his thoughts on polio and measles vaccines, Milhoan seemed to question whether both are still necessary[…]
“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. 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,” Milhoan said

“When … we talk about the risk of, let’s say, measles, many of those risks of not getting measles without having a vaccine was in the 1960s. We take care of children much differently now”

Ralph Abraham #quack #crackpot #mammon #pratt statnews.com

With measles transmission in the United States at levels that haven’t been seen in decades, the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that he would not view the loss of the country’s measles elimination status as a significant event.

“Not really,” said Ralph Abraham, a physician who formerly served as Louisiana’s surgeon general. “You know, it’s just the cost of doing business, with our borders being somewhat porous [and] global and international travel.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. #quack #pratt #dunning-kruger statnews.com

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as America’s secretary of health and human services, neutral observers might have asked themselves: Would it be possible for a lawyer who had questioned the safety of childhood vaccinations for two decades to look at the available data and reconsider his views?

Kennedy’s recent interviews with Fox News, along with an op-ed he published on that outlet’s website, have been enough to make many experts conclude the answer is “no”

Parsing every claim about the measles vaccine that Kennedy has made would take a long time, so let’s focus on one: that the vaccine causes deaths every year. Researchers say that simply isn’t true, except potentially in a small number of people who are not supposed to receive it — those with compromised immune systems

“There are adverse events from the vaccine,” Kennedy said in a March 11 interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity. “It does cause deaths every year. It causes — it causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves”[…]
“The MMR vaccine has never been found to cause a death in an immunocompetent individual,” Daniel Griffin, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Island Infectious Disease Medical in New York said, echoing that conclusion. “If you’ve got someone who has a compromised immune system, and someone doesn’t know any better and gives them an active vaccine, which is what you are not supposed to do, then, you know, that could result in a death”[…]
Kennedy’s claim about vaccine deaths came amid a series of other claims about vaccine safety. In one interview, he claimed vaccines are rarely compared with placebos; they usually are. He also made it sound as if measles immunity from the vaccine wanes faster than it does; in fact it is typically lifelong

Dr. Roger Marshall #fundie statnews.com

“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” he said. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”

Pressed on that point, Marshall shrugged.

“Just, like, homeless people. — I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don’t want health care,” he said. “The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying socially that’s where they are. So there’s a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [into] the ER.”