Public Health Groups Not Shedding Tears Over Weldon’s Failed CDC Bid

The anti-vaccine views of the Trump administration’s top pick to lead the CDC may have been what cost its nominee the bid, but the public health community offered little sympathy for the sudden withdrawal.

The White House revoked its nomination for David Weldon, MD, to lead the CDC just hours before his hearing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) was set to begin, after it became clear that Weldon didn’t have the necessary votes. Weldon, an internal medicine physician and former Florida Republican congressman, is a prominent critic of vaccine safety.

HELP committee member Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told Bloomberg that after meeting with Weldon last month, she was “deeply disturbed to hear Dr. Weldon repeat debunked claims about vaccines.”

“As we face one of the worst measles outbreaks in years thanks to President Trump, a vaccine skeptic who spent years spreading lies about safe and proven vaccines should never have even been under consideration to lead the foremost agency charged with protecting public health,” Murray said in a statement.

Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association said revoking Weldon’s nomination was a good decision. “He was the wrong guy for the job,” Benjamin said, noting that Weldon and the CDC “have not seen eye to eye on a range of things, including a vaccine safety or recommendations.”

Benjamin also pointed out that the public health context of this moment is particularly important, with a growing measles outbreak — vaccine preventable disease — and an anti-vaccine secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“That hearing would have been a political bloodbath,” he said, adding that he hopes that the next nominee is a physician who has run a state or local health department with competent management skills.

Becky Smullin Dawson, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, said Weldon’s nomination being withdrawn is a “glimmer of hope … While it is only a Band-Aid covering a bullet hole, it is progress.”

She emphasized that his withdrawal didn’t happen by chance but rather because the public health community has spoken up.

“In the midst of a measles outbreak, [tuberculosis] spreading, avian influenza fears rising, and a public health workforce that is rallying, suing, and finding alternative ways of communicating science, research, and preventive medicine — putting someone at the head of CDC who has been critical of the agency and against primary prevention isn’t going to fly,” Dawson said.

“Today, we can and should pause for a moment and celebrate,” she added, “then it is back to work. There is so much more to be done.”

In an official statement obtained by the Washington Post, Weldon doubled down on his past work as a congressman taking on two vaccine issues: thimerosal, a preservative used in some multidose vaccine vials, and the safety profile of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. All childhood vaccines are now available without thimerosal, according to the FDA. Weldon said that, if confirmed, he was planning on going into old CDC databases to “quietly investigate” whether thimerosal had caused harm.

“I was hoping to find no evidence of corruption of the science at CDC. Maybe in hearing it from me, members of the public might be reassured and it might help improve the currently somewhat tarnished image of CDC and Pharma,” he wrote.

Weldon also highlighted the long discredited research of Andrew Wakefield, MBBS, formerly of the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine in London, who led some of the early now-retracted research that sparked the conversation about a link between MMR vaccines and autism. Last week, the CDC said it will conduct a study into possible connections between vaccines and autism despite abundant research disproving any linkage.

Paul Offit, MD, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told MedPage Today earlier this year that “the Wakefield study was flawed because nothing was studied,” and there wasn’t even a control group.

Healthcare organizations criticized the announcement that the CDC would look at potential links between autism and vaccines as a waste of research dollars.

“Decades of research and hundreds of carefully designed and scientifically sound studies show no link or association between vaccines and autism,” said Tina Tan, MD, in a statement as president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

American Academy of Pediatrics President Susan Kressly, MD, agreed, adding in a statement that revisiting established science “does a disservice to individuals with autism and their families by diverting funding that is needed to learn more about autism and how we can strengthen supportive communities. We should be talking about prioritizing research on a wide range of child health priorities to explore what will help every child thrive and reach their fullest potential.”

Research funding is “already facing deep cuts,” Tan noted. Worse, “CDC’s study on the safety of vaccines could drive misinformation, leading to lower vaccination rates, more serious, vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks and a significantly weakened public health response,” she cautioned.

The White House has not yet announced its next nominee. Before Weldon was selected, other names that were tossed around for the role were Robert Redfield, MD, Trump’s CDC director from his first term, and Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD, the Florida surgeon general who has also expressed vaccine skepticism.

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