Top Leadership Of Centers For Disease Control Resigns

 

After less than a month in the job, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Dr. Susan Monarez has been fired after resisting HHS Secretary Robert F. "Brainworm" Kennedy's politicized policies on vaccinations.  Her attorneys Abbe Lowell and Mark Zaid released this statement yesterday:

"When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted.

"This is not about one official. It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science. The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within."  (our emphasis)

She wasn't the only career scientist to leave the CDC:

Her departure coincided with the resignations this week of at least four top CDC officials. The list includes Dr. Debra Houry, the agency's deputy director; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, head of the agency's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, head of its National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Dr. Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology.

In an email seen by The Associated Press, Houry lamented the crippling effects on the agency from planned budget cuts, reorganization and firings.

"I am committed to protecting the public's health, but the ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency," she wrote.

She also noted the rise of misinformation about vaccines during the current Trump administration, and alluded to new limits on CDC communications.

"For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations," she wrote.

Daskalakis worked closely with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Kennedy remade the committee by firing everyone and replacing them with a group that included several vaccine skeptics — one of whom was put in charge of a COVID-19 vaccines workgroup.

In his resignation letter, Daskalakis lamented that the changes put "people of dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor in charge of recommending vaccine policy." He described Monarez as "hamstrung and sidelined by an authoritarian leader." He added: "Their desire to please a political base will result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults."

He also wrote: "I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality."...  (our emphasis)

This decapitation of the leadership of our country's top public health agency in order to politicize vaccine policy will, as Daskalakis says, "result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults."  Let that sink in.  Kennedy, a person who's only qualification for his job was his successful pandering to his fellow authoritarian the Malignant Fascist and the extreme anti- vaxxers, will have blood on his hands for his actions.  Some will be the blood of his leader's cultists who voted for this, but some will be innocent blood.  Sic transit gloria, America.

(Image: the doctor and the crank / screenshot via YouTube)

Trump Begins Dismantling Government Science

 

There may be some people out there that, when they see the words "government science," they have visions of secret labs and five- headed rats.  Here's what it really is, and what the convicted felon Malignant Fascist and his anti- science Luddites are doing in just his first week in office:

The federal government’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report is arguably the closest thing we have to an early warning system for disease. In addition to summaries of new research findings, it includes essential information about outbreaks so that front-line professionals and officials know what to look out for ― and, eventually, how to respond.  [snip]

The MMWR comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which publishes it every Thursday. But as of Thursday evening, this week’s MMWR still hadn’t appeared.

That is not an accident. In fact, it could be the first shot in President Donald Trump’s war on government science.

On Tuesday, just one day after Trump returned to the White House, the officials he has put in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services circulated a memo ordering staff to pause all communications until Feb. 2 unless “reviewed and approved by a Presidential appointee.” [snip]

The officials also put a temporary stop to meetings and travel, including for the outside advisory groups that make recommendations for funding grants from the National Institutes of Health. Many of the scholars and scientists who serve on those panels said they heard about the stoppage just weeks or days before scheduled meetings ― or, in some cases, smack in the middle of meetings that were already taking place.  [snip]

It’s no secret that Trump’s allies and lieutenants have promised radical changes throughout HHS, with special attention to agencies like the CDC and the NIH, which they have accused of misdirecting resources, mishandling outbreaks and engaging in too much “woke” activity.

This includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the lawyer and purveyor of vaccine misinformation whom Trump has appointed to lead HHS. He has talked about mass dismissals of career staff and shifting the focus of health agencies away from infectious disease.  [snip]

Chrystal Starbird, a biochemistry and biophysics professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, told HuffPost she learned via email yesterday that the NIH had canceled a meeting on cellular research grants. The email said the agency had no information about a makeup date, and Starbird thinks it will likely be weeks, or “more likely months,” before they can find one.

Starbird, whose investigations of cell membranes have implications for the development of cancer and Alzheimer’s therapies, worries that this sudden wave of delays could have a domino effect, setting back the entire grant process in ways that will jeopardize the future of some research projects...

We hope everyone is invested in the leech industry, because that's where this bunch of dangerous buffoons want to take us.