Trump Selects Former Florida Rep. Dr. Dave Weldon to Lead the CDC
It is interesting to note that for the first time, the incoming C.D.C. director will need Senate confirmation.
Dr. Dave Weldon, a physician and former congressman from Florida, has been nominated by President/President-elect Donald Trump to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Trump cited his experience in medicine, the military, and the government when announcing this pick.
“In addition to being a Medical Doctor for 40 years, and an Army Veteran, Dave has been a respected conservative leader on fiscal and social issues, and served on the Labor/HHS Appropriations Subcommittee, working for Accountability on HHS and CDC Policy and Budgeting,” Trump said in the Friday evening announcement.
“Dave also served in a leading role in Government Oversight and Reform Committee Hearings, addressing issues within HHS and CDC. Dave has successfully worked with the CDC to enact a ban on patents for human embryos,” Trump said.
Weldon has been known for his skepticism regarding vaccine safety, and offered a vaccine safety bill to relocate vaccine safety research and was a watchdog for conservative interests.
He also introduced a “vaccine safety bill” that aimed to relocate most vaccine safety research from the C.D.C. — which he said had an “inherent conflict of interest” — to a separate agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
Mr. Trump’s choice signals yet again his commitment to reforming the role of federal health agencies in radical ways. Though Dr. Weldon is an internist, his skepticism of vaccine safety and concern about C.D.C. overreach echo those of other nominees, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
…As a member of congress, Dr. Weldon also authored the so-called Weldon Amendment, which barred the Department of Health and Human Services from funding federal or state programs that “discriminated” against health insurance plans that did not cover abortions.
Separating the CDC from research sounds like a sensible idea, considering Big Pharma’s patronage of that agency. The CDC has received significant financial contributions through the CDC Foundation from pharmaceutical companies.
In a recently-released petition to the CDC, several watchdog groups including Public Citizen, the Project on Government Oversight, and U.S. Right to Know, are demanding that the CDC be transparent about the industry funding they receive through their foundation.
Since the CDC Foundation was created in 1995, hundreds of corporations have contributed to public health programs, for a total of $161 million in donations. Many of these contributions could be seen as conflicts of interest–for example, a $193,000 donation from Roche, the maker of antiviral drug Tamiflu, to fund a CDC flu prevention campaign.
Despite the significant funding the CDC receives from industry via its foundation, few were aware of these conflicts until Jeanne Lenzer called attention to the foundation in The BMJ a few years ago.
Recently, the CDC accepted $3.4 million from Pfizer for the prevention of Cryptococcal disease, $1 million from Merck & Co. pharmaceutical company for a program on preventing maternal mortality, and $750,000 from Biogen for a program on screening newborns for spinal muscular atrophy, the petition states.
It is interesting to note that the incoming C.D.C. director will need Senate confirmation for the first time. This comes about as the Republicans in the Senate created the “Restoring Trust in Public Health Act“, which is a direct result of the destructive covid response policies perpetrated by this agency.
The agency “employs over 10,000 individuals and has requested $9.57 billion of discretionary budget authority and an additional $5.8 billion of mandatory funding from Congress for fiscal year 2022, and yet Congress has no say in who leads the center,” the lawmakers said.
The bill is largely a response to alleged “politically motivated decision-making” at the agency and overreach of authority––such as its role in establishing the eviction moratorium–– during the coronavirus pandemic, said the fact sheet.
We wish the Trump team much good luck in the efforts to restore trust in public health officials in the post-covid world.
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Comments
That’s crazy. I had no idea that the CDC director didn’t require Senate Authorization. It makes you wonder what other bureaucrats with this kind of power also don’t need (or didn’t need) Senate confirmation. To put it in perspective, all military officers need Senate consent (even though it’s a largely pro-forma consent for 99% of officers).