Trump's pro-life pick to run CDC is bad news for status quo, Big Pharma — good news for vax oversight

President-elect Donald Trump selected former Florida congressman Dr. Dave Weldon (R) on Friday as his nominee for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a pick celebrated by his proposed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

As with most of Trump's other nominations, Dr. Weldon, 71, has all the makings of a disruptor, prompting establishmentarians to take notice and clutch pearls. After all, Dr. Weldon has long criticized the agency he is poised to run, has raised concerns about vaccine safety, and has been consistently pro-life even when politically inexpedient.

"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 noted in his 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."

Dr. Weldon sponsored the Fetus Farming Prohibition Act of 2006, which effectively prohibits the solicitation or acquisition of tissue from human babies gestated for research purposes.

Trump stressed that Americans have "lost trust" in the federal health establishment, including the CDC, and indicated that Dr. Weldon will help restore that faith and "ensure Americans have the tools and resources they need to understand the underlying causes of disease, and the solutions to cure these diseases."

A survey examining Americans' trust in public health agencies published last year in the journal Health Affairs revealed that 16% of respondents said they don't have "very much" trust in the CDC's recommendations and 10% indicated they do not trust the agency "at all." Of those surveyed, 37% said they had a "great deal" of trust in the CDC's recommendations, and another 37% said they "somewhat" trust the agency.

Another survey published earlier this year in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Health Forum indicated that 24% of respondents had little or no trust in the CDC.

'Dave will proudly restore the CDC to its true purpose.'

The CDC, home to over 12,000 employees and operating with a discretionary budget of over $9 billion this year, did a great deal during the pandemic to undermine its credibility.

For instance, former Biden CDC director Rochelle Walensky pushed novel vaccines on the American public, including resilient children, some of which were later found to be unsafe; discounted warnings from an agency advisory panel about booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine and recommended them anyway; claimed in 2021 that "vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don't get sick"; repeatedly extended the moratorium on rental evictions, citing the need to stop the spread of COVID-19; and colluded with the American Federation of Teachers and its boss Randi Weingarten at the expense of American children.

The agency also initially cast doubt on whether the experimental COVID-19 vaccines were causing myocarditis in young Americans; recommended that everyone in K-12 schools wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status, which studies have indicated did far more harm than good; and coordinated with social media companies to censor vaccine criticism online.

The CDC's role in the Biden administration's censorship efforts has not only hurt its reputation but made it a target for numerous lawsuits.

Several vaccine-injured Americans recently filed a lawsuit against the CDC and other elements of the Biden administration for allegedly working to "coerce, induce, and collude with social media platforms to censor, suppress, and label as 'misinformation' speech expressed by those who have suffered vaccine-related injuries."

"As a father of two and a husband of 45 years, Dave understands American Family Values, and views Health as one of utmost importance," continued Trump. "Dave will prioritize Transparency, Competence, and High Standards at CDC. Dave will proudly restore the CDC to its true purpose, and will work to end the Chronic Disease Epidemic, and Make America Healthy Again!"

'We must eliminate all real and perceived conflicts of interest.'

Kennedy, who previously highlighted Dr. Weldon's work exposing the CDC's problems, congratulated him over the weekend, stating, "Dave's leadership at CDC will bring the truth and transparency needed to restore the public's confidence in this institution."

Weldon, like Kennedy, has refused to blindly trust in federal health agencies, particularly when it comes to their vaccine oversight.

In 2007, Dr. Weldon introduced legislation aimed at moving vaccine safety oversight from the CDC — an agency whose dual objectives of high immunization rates and vaccine safety may oftentimes conflict — to an independent agency that would report directly to the HHS secretary.

He noted in a statement at the time, "Federal agencies charged with overseeing vaccine safety research have failed. They have failed to provide sufficient resources for vaccine safety research. They have failed to adequately fund extramural research. And, they have failed to free themselves from conflicts of interest that serve to undermine public confidence in the safety of vaccines."

"If government-funded vaccine safety research is to be broadly accepted, we must eliminate all real and perceived conflicts of interest," continued Dr. Weldon. "Otherwise, we will fail to achieve the level of acceptance that is necessary to restore, build, and secure public confidence over the long-run. A vaccine safety program housed anywhere within the CDC fails to achieve this independence."

'He is a dangerous pick to lead CDC.'

Trump's nominee has not only ruffled feathers by expecting both quality and quantity when it comes to immunizations but by expressing concern about the link between mercury — thimerosal — in vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders.

While various Republicans have celebrated the pick, Democratic lawmakers and elements of the American health establishment have concern-mongered about the possibility of Dr. Weldon as CDC director.

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who has received millions of dollars from Big Pharma and the health industry, said in a statement, "Dr. Dave Weldon is an extremist with zero public health experience who has spent years promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy thinking and junk health plans."

"He is a dangerous pick to lead CDC," added Murray.

Murray suggested further that Dr. Weldon's pro-life views were especially distressing, stating that "there is no reason to entrust the work of tackling our nation's maternal mortality crisis and collecting data essential to understanding the deadly outcome of abortion bans to the man responsible for the Weldon Amendment that allows health care providers to deny women essential abortion care."

Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy researcher at the University of California Law-San Francisco, told NBC News, "Anti-vaccine people are celebrating this because they firmly see Weldon as an ally."

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