The chair of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which last week voted to stop recommending the hepatitis B shot at birth, has been fired from his pediatric cardiology practice "solely because" of his role on the vaccine advisory panel, according to his wife. 

Kirk and Kimberly Milhoan were at a pediatric cardiology conference in Hong Kong when they got the news, which she had been expecting all week, Kimberly Milhoan wrote on Substack Thursday. She blamed an "overwhelming number of calls" to Kirk's employer "demanding his firing for his role on ACIP."

He disclosed to the practice when he first accepted the appointment and then again when he agreed to chair ACIP, she said. Milhoan was a recent ACIP appointment, just this September, and he took the chair just this month when epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff took a senior role in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Milhoan was headed to the airport for the Hong Kong conference Thursday when ACIP postponed a vote on hepatitis B vaccination until the next day, vice chair Robert Malone said then.

"He is a respected and valued contributor to his department. He has no patient or family complaints against him, and numerous accolades. Staff enjoy working with him. Those who broke the news to him apologized profusely, commending his integrity," Kimberly Milhoan wrote. 

"The greatest irony is my husband has been a vaccine advocate throughout his career. He never denied risk, and respected principles of autonomy and informed consent, but believed, and recommended, that in most cases the benefit outweighed the risk associated with vaccines," she said.