Oppose Anti-Vaccine Extremist David Weldon for CDC Director

On Thursday, March 13th, the US Senate will begin hearings for Dr. Dave Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the nation’s public health agency. Weldon, like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has a long history of promoting dangerous misinformation about vaccines, including the thoroughly debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. Modern vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives over the past 50 years and are an essential public health tool to combat pandemics and prevent deadly and disabling illnesses like measles and polio.

Anti-vaccine sentiment is currently driving a rise in preventable diseases from measles to whooping cough. The Trump administration is actively disrupting the efforts of scientific experts to deliver essential vaccine recommendations. Meanwhile, public health experts are sounding the alarm about a potential major H5N1 (aka bird flu) outbreak even as Secretary Kennedy denounces the use of bird flu vaccines that could help curb this impending public health disaster. It is difficult to imagine a more perilous time to put a vocal opponent of evidence-based medicine in charge of the CDC.

The Senate must refuse to add yet another anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist to America’s health leadership and oppose David Weldon’s nomination for CDC Director.

Issue contents courtesy of Defend Public Health, an all-volunteer network of public health researchers, healthcare workers, advocates and allies fighting to protect the health of all from the Trump administration’s cruel attacks on proven, science-based public health policies.