Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/12/2009 8:01:38 PM PST by nickcarraway
Director draws praise, criticism from observers
Since President-elect Barack Obama accepted the resignation of the head of the nation’s leading public health agency last week, her admirers and detractors have been arguing about her legacy and the future of the Atlanta-based research facility.
During Dr. Julie Gerberding’s six years directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, critics lambasted her, accusing her of sacrificing science for politics and carrying the Bush agenda on global warming and other issues into the world of scientific research.
Her defenders countered that she kept the agency above political concerns and expanded its mission to include bioterrorism research, combating AIDS globally and responding to national health threats. They say the government is losing a strong leader who could have provided continuity for the years ahead.
New administrations often clean house at the top of their agencies. Gerberding’s resignation, effective Jan. 20, became public Friday. She was unavailable for comment Saturday.
As the CDC’s first female director departs, some health care advocates say they hope a change in leadership spurs a change in direction and priorities for the agency, which employs 9,000 people and has a budget of $9 billion.
“In the last eight years, across the board in government, politics has been trumping science,” said Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America’s Health, a public health watchdog group based in Washington. Levi said he hopes the new administration “returns to science as the basis of policy.”
Gerberding was criticized in 2007 after it was alleged she let the White House censor her congressional testimony on climate change. A deleted section of the testimony included the statement that “catastrophic weather events such as heat waves and hurricanes are expected to become more frequent, severe and costly.”
Gerberding said at the time that the White House review process was customary and that she’d spoken openly and without constraint.
Saturday, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said: “Dr. Gerberding is a very strong person when it comes to her integrity. She was never muzzled or constrained.”
Debra Lappin, a health consultant who serves on the advisory board to the CDC director, said Gerberding has not played politics with her position. “Her commitment to science cuts across the aisle,” Lappin said in an interview late last year.
A fractured view of Gerberding’s tenure emerged in interviews Saturday.
Terrence Manning, head of the government employees union at the CDC, which represents 1,800 nonscientist employees, said she was a “people person” who “did the best she could with what was given.”
But Francesca Grifo, a director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said she spoke to CDC researchers who were “cheering” the departure of the director. Gerberding’s critics say her 2003 reorganization of the CDC prompted an exodus of key scientific staff.
While some CDC watchers tossed out names of possible Gerberding replacements, others focused on the direction the agency will take under a new leader.
Levi, of the Washington watchdog group, said the CDC should place greater emphasis on preventing illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes.
Helene Gayle, president of Atlanta-based CARE USA, which battles hunger across the world, said the CDC should focus less on fighting bioterrorism and more on combating disease.
On the other hand, U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) praised Gerberding for transforming the agency into a force against bioterrorism. “She’s done an outstanding job overseeing those things while continuing to guide the CDC on its mission of fighting disease around the world,” Isakson said.
Among the candidates for CDC director whose names have surfaced in the public health community, according to advocates, are CARE President Gayle; New York City’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden; Baltimore’s health commissioner, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein; and Los Angeles’ health director Dr. Jonathan Fielding.
These people are truly scary. Why would anyone expect the director of the CDC to make pronouncements about issues that have no relation to their job and are specifically outside their area of competence? She never even denied the existence of anthropogenic climate change, her only sin was that her advocacy wasn’t sufficiently militant.
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