Posted on 09/10/2025 12:32:17 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The agency needs to be strengthened, not torn down
His long record of fomenting distrust of vaccinesopens in a new tab or window and purveying false and misleadingopens in a new tab or window health information -- and now even stoking animusopens in a new tab or window against career scientists -- is shaping national policy. The consequences are reverberating across America's most venerable scientific institutions like the FDA and NIH. But there is no agency where the damage is so palpable and enduring than the CDC, America's frontline agency against health threats.
Kennedy's campaign -- including his recent declaration that CDC should abandon chronic disease prevention and his testy Senate testimony -- will weaken science and leave the country less safe, less healthy, and less prepared. And the saddest reality is that all this damage cannot be easily undone.
Reforming or Destroying?
The staff members at the CDC are often called the nation's "disease detectives.opens in a new tab or window" Its scientists investigate outbreaks, guide vaccine policy, and provide evidence-based health information and recommendations that are essential to public health and safety. From polioopens in a new tab or window, Ebolaopens in a new tab or window, and mpoxopens in a new tab or window to avian influenza and COVID-19, the CDC has been indispensable. Less well understood, but equally essential, is the agency's work on chronic diseasesopens in a new tab or window, occupational safety, and injury prevention -- leading causes of disability and death in the U.S.
The idea of CDC abandoning chronic disease preventionopens in a new tab or window is dangerous. Without addressing smoking, poor diet, environmental exposures, and inequities, America's health crisis will deepen.
Kennedy claims the CDC needs fundamental reform. I certainly agree the agency should be improved, including increased capacities (e.g., surveillance and advanced data systems), closer partnerships with state health departments, and far better health communication. But Kennedy's project is not about reform; it is about dismantling and denigrating.
Let's start with funding and staffing. The CDC has already lost thousands of staff members, and billions of dollarsopens in a new tab or window in federal public health funding earmarked for states has been cut. The President's budget proposes a 50% cutopens in a new tab or window to the CDC's overall budget for 2026; this is separate from the cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill. Kennedy also dismissed every memberopens in a new tab or window of the agency's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), citing conflicts of interest, and then appointedopens in a new tab or window new ACIP membersopens in a new tab or window with long histories of anti-vaccine rhetoric and actual conflicts. Meanwhile, agency leadership has been systematically hollowed out, culminating with the firing of CDC directoropens in a new tab or window Susan Monarez, PhD, less than a month into her tenure. Several key scientific leaders resignedopens in a new tab or window shortly after, including top vaccine scientists and the agency's chief medical officer. I've experienced this hollowing out of HHS firsthand, with my recent dismissal from a scientific advisory committee for the NIH Fogarty International Center.
There is a deeply troubling pattern here. Fire the most eminent scientists in America. Replace them with handpicked advisersopens in a new tab or window who are loyal to the secretary. Then accept their recommendations under the guise of advancing "gold-standard" science and increasing "public trust" in the CDC.
We all know that is not how science works. The likely outcome of all this will be confusion among doctors and patients, reduced vaccine uptake, pharmacies not carrying vaccines, and insurers not covering them. The inevitable result will be resurgent outbreaks of preventable diseases.
Most recently, in his testimonyopens in a new tab or window before the Senate Finance Committee, Kennedy doubled down on his criticism of the CDC, saying that firing its leading scientists was "absolutely necessary...to restore the agency to its role as the world's gold standard public health agency." He repeated his long-standing and inaccurate claim that the agency "failed miserably" during the COVID-19 pandemic and pushed "nonsensical policies" that "destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools, caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science and heightened economic inequality."
Perhaps it never occurred to Kennedy to ask whether the CDC actually did these things. In fact, it was states -- including red states -- that closed schools and ordered lockdowns. The CDC has never had the power to do any of these things.
Also, during the hearing, Kennedy hurled inflammatory words at CDC staff. He claimed without evidence that they had colluded with the pharmaceutical industryopens in a new tab or window and blamed the agency for the high rates of chronic disease in the U.S. "That's why we had to fire people at the CDC," he said. This echoes previous comments from Kennedy, who has called the CDC a "cesspool of corruptionopens in a new tab or window" and "the most corruptopens in a new tab or window" agency in government.
Kennedy's verbal attacks on the CDC don't go unnoticed by the general public and state leaders. His words appear to have helped embolden others.
The August 8 attackopens in a new tab or window on the CDC's headquarters in Atlanta was a terrifying, violent moment for public health. Scientists doing their job shouldn't need bodyguards. Meanwhile, all this venom has spilled over into the states. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo recently compared childhood vaccines to slaveryopens in a new tab or window when announcing that Florida will end school-based vaccine requirements, the first state to do so in 45 years. Later, Ladapo said he doesn't need to studyopens in a new tab or window the potential impact of ending vaccine mandates for children. This kind of willful ignorance could see the scourge of vaccine-preventable diseases come roaring back.
Other states are trying to reinstate broad religious exemptions to childhood immunization requirements like West Virginiaopens in a new tab or window. We know from the recent multistate outbreak of measlesopens in a new tab or window that broad religious opt-outs can cause needless hospitalizations and deaths.
I have recounted only a fraction of the harms to the nation's public health infrastructure. I haven't even mentioned elimination of funding for mRNA vaccine researchopens in a new tab or window, slashing research funding for anything that may smack of diversity or health equityopens in a new tab or window, or vast reductions in funding for Medicaidopens in a new tab or window and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programopens in a new tab or window (SNAP), among many other areas.
What Comes Next
Of deep concern, we can't count on the courts coming to the rescue. Despite more than a century of settled constitutional law supporting vaccine mandatesopens in a new tab or window, a super conservative Supreme Court majority will almost certainly one day require religious exemptions. And I don't expect the courts to fight back against ending childhood vaccinations entirely. The nation's highest court has repeatedly declined to curb the worst overreaches of the president.
Certainly, the CDC could be reformedopens in a new tab or window. The pandemic exposed weaknesses in communication, speed, and coordination. The answer is to strengthen the CDC: invest in science, rebuild the public health workforce, improve transparency, and modernize data systems.
Kennedy's attacks on science echo a broader wave of populist distrustopens in a new tab or window in institutions. Yet, health is different from politics. Viruses do not respect ideology. Cancer does not wait for elections. Chronic disease and pandemics alike require science, not slogans. To weaken the CDC is to gamble with American lives.
If Kennedy does not understand the importance of a robust public health agency guided by science, President Trump needs to fire him.
As well he should.
No. It needs to be torn asunder.
The CDC declared war on America six years ago.
I see the CDC c*nt he fired has been invited to speak to the Senate. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee is holding the hearing on 9/17. How many of those Big Pharma Repuke Senators will welcome her with open arms?
We are so far down the wrong path, medically, it’s ridiculous.
I will never go through something like Covid ever again! I just get FURIOUS if I even THINK about the BS THE WORLD put up with for TWO FLIPPIN’ YEARS!
And the after-effects, especially on the kids, is probably the most harmful thing the CDC could’ve done, along with those awful shots and a gazillion recommended boosters!
Lies, lies, LIES! ALL of it!
Given the CDC’s almost criminal response to COVID, what, exactly is the problem, Medpage today? Perhaps you should get your medical info from somewhere else than ABC/CBS/NBC/NPR/MSNBC/etc. Just sayin’.
And Iopens in a new tab or window agree.
Should be strengthened ??? Needs to be dismantled and not replaced. It is a perfect example of what happens to bureaucracies that control industries. The Constitution does not allow for such agencies. Pure drugs can be handled under the weights and measures clause. Putting out or approving “medicines” known to be poisonous or null value should be prosecuted as criminal acts.
Medpage has the vapors.
“If Kennedy does not understand the importance of a robust public health agency guided by science, President Trump needs to fire him”
He understands it perfectly. Which is why those in CDC who are guided by their connections to the pharmaceutical industry must go.
NIH CDC etc under Fauci invented new Pandemic diseases with taxpayer money, released them on citizens, then invented/approved deadly vaccine to supposedly protect and prevent the diseases they invented.
These are the facts. These SOBS should all be in prison. For life.
“Perhaps it never occurred to Kennedy to ask whether the CDC actually did these things. In fact, it was states — including red states — that closed schools and ordered lockdowns. The CDC has never had the power to do any of these things.”
They did not have the power but they are the agency that states and other jurisdictions looked to for advice on school closings and lockdowns.
The author has a JD, not a MD, DO , DDS or other medical degree.
That’s what we voted for.
You wanna know when CDC is finally honest? When they admit the effects of shedding of the damn CoVID genetic treatments’ toxic spike protein in the general population.
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