New York (AP) – Dr. David Weldon has been outside the national ramp airy for more than 15 years when he was nominated for the control and prevention of diseases. But many lawyers against Avaccine knew him well.
“He is one of us !! It has had a dynamic since our movement, ”wrote the co-director of the Mississippi parents for vaccine rights on Facebook. And on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Autism Action Network described the introduction of laws two decades ago to “stop the vaccine pedocide”.
Weldon, who was nominated by President Donald Trump, must be confirmed by the US Senate before he can lead the country’s highest public health authority. His hearing for confirmation must be stopped on Thursday.
The 71-year-old MEP in Florida is considered close to his alleged boss, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the US Health Secretary, who has been one of the leading activists of the nation for years.
Officials from the Ministry of Health and Human Services refused to provide Weldon or Kennedy available for an interview with Associated Press.
When he made the nomination announcement, Trump said that Weldon “will proudly restore the CDC for its true purpose and end the epidemic of chronic diseases and make America well again!”
Weldon served in the army and in the congress
The CDC was founded almost 80 years ago to prevent malaria in the United States from being expanded to be expanded later, and it gradually became a leading global provider of infectious and chronic diseases and a contact point for health information.
Today the agency based in Atlanta has a core budget of more than $ 9 billion. It had about 13,000 employees when Trump took office, but more than 500 were released as part of a dramatic and continuous advance as part of a dramatic – and other – push of the President and his billionaire consultant Elon Musk.
Weldon has no experience in the federal public heath, but that is not unusual. The last presidential administrations – both democratic and republican – have appointed outsiders without CDC experience.
In contrast to Weldon, these outsiders were researchers for public health or headed state health departments. He is a veteran of army and internal doctors, whose main claim to fame represented a district in Central Florida in the Congress from 1995 to 2009.
After leaving the congress, Weldon Medicine practiced in Florida, taught at the Florida Institute of Technology, was CEO of the Israel Allies Foundation and took unsuccessful runs in the Federal and State Office. In a letter dated March 1 to HHS, Weldon said that if he had confirmed, he would resign from the foundation and two health organizations in Florida. He also promised to sell his participations to funds that invest in energy, pharmaceutical and health companies.
He criticized vaccine security and the CDC – and the CDC
Weldon was a leading raise in a congress that met the causes of autism after the congress, which began around 2000. It was carried out by a controversial and ultimately discredited study by the British researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield drove, who claimed to find a connection between the measles mump-rubella vaccine and autism.
The campaign in the congress was mostly from the US -Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican of Indiana, whose grandson had autism. Weldon was a prominent voice in Burton’s hearings and sponsored a legislation that was responsible for an independent agency within HHS for the security of the nation-a idea that not everyone contradicts public health.
But Weldon also rejected studies in which no causal connection between vaccines in childhood and autism was found, and accused the CDC of brief -circuit research, which could show differently.
In the meantime, Weldon was a friend of practitioners of the marginal medicine. When Weldon invited Wakefield to testify before the congress, he also brought Dr. James “Jeff” Bradstreet, who used alternative medicine to treat autistic children. Bradstreet died in 2015 after the US Food and Drug Administration attacked his office of a gunshot wound that the police described a suicide.
Weldon later appeared in “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe”, a documentary staged by Wakefield from 2016 by Del BigTree, an activist who later became manager of the Kennedy Presidential Campaign. In the film, Weldon repeated suspicion and accusations of CDC that he had raised a member of the congress.
Kennedy has argued that experts who advise the CDC about vaccine policy have conflicts from working with pharmaceutical companies in conflicts or receives money from money. These consultants routinely openly open conflicts in public meetings, but the CDC launched a web tool last week to “increase the transparency of conflicts of interest”.
Does Weldon want to build or tear down CDC?
At the hearing on Thursday, the Democrats Weldon are likely to push for his vaccine views and its plans for the agency as part of a health minister, who has shown contempt for this.
Dr. Anne Schuchat worked for the CDC for 33 years before retiring in 2021 and worked twice as deputy director. She said she didn’t know of Weldon, but these agency directors gradually develop appreciation and respect for his work.
If Weldon follows a similar pattern, it could be a great capital: his Capitol Hill experience could facilitate CDC to secure funds and political support.
“With an optimistic point of view, you can build a lot with what he has on paper,” she said. “With a pessimistic point of view, that would be disappointing – and dangerous.”
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