He then thought out loud about what would happen if people stopped getting vaccinated. “If we take away all the herd immunity, does that change, does that teetering change in a different direction?” he asked.
Resists
In a statement, AMA trustee Sandra Adamson Fryhofer dismissed the question. “This is not a theoretical debate – it is a dangerous step backwards,” 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 drop, paralysis, lifelong disability and death return. The science on this is established.”
Fryhofer also addressed Milhoan's repeated argument that the focus of vaccination policy should shift from population-level health to individual autonomy. Moving away from routine vaccinations, which includes discussions between doctors and patients, “does not increase freedom — it increases suffering,” she said, adding that weakening the recommendations “will cost lives.”
Overall, Milhoan's comments only further undermine the relevance of ACIP and federal vaccine policy within the medical community and states. According to a KFF policy brief, 27 states and Washington DC have already announced they will not follow the current CDC vaccine recommendations, which Kennedy dramatically revised earlier this month without even consulting the ACIP. Instead, the majority of states rely on previous recommendations or recommendations made within states or by medical organizations.
On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced the 2026 update to its vaccine schedule for children and adolescents, which it has proposed as an alternative to the CDC's schedule and is widely embraced by pediatricians. In the announcement, AAP noted that 12 other medical organizations have endorsed the scheme, including the AMA, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.
The AAP's updated recommendations are largely the same as last year's schedule, but differ significantly from the CDC's recommendations, which “deviate from long-standing medical evidence and no longer provide the optimal way to prevent disease in children,” the AAP said.
“The AAP will continue to make recommendations for immunizations that are rooted in science and that are in the best interests of the health of this country's infants, children and adolescents,” AAP President Andrew Racine said in the announcement.
