If President Donald Trump is chosen to lead the CDC, Dave Weldon, a former Florida congressman and physician, is being positioned as a key anti-vaccine ally for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health secretary.
Experts say Weldon’s nomination comes at a critical time for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the U.S. faces several health threats, including H5N1 bird flu, whooping cough and a spike in measles cases.
Weldon served in Congress for 14 years, representing Florida’s 15th District, where he was an outspoken critic of the public health department and its vaccine program.
In 2007, he introduced a bill to transfer responsibility for the nation’s vaccine safety from the CDC to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, significantly reducing the CDC’s role. It did not go further than committees.
He also falsely claimed that thimerosal, a preservative used in vaccines, is linked to autism, and advocated restrictions on abortion.
If confirmed by the Senate, Weldon will have significant influence over vaccine policy in the US. The CDC is responsible for detecting and responding to infectious diseases, developing vaccine guidelines, collecting and analyzing health data, and managing public health emergencies.
He would also work under Kennedy, as the CDC is one of thirteen divisions overseen by HHS.
Kennedy is known as a leading anti-vaccine activist, especially for falsely claiming that vaccines are linked to autism.
“Anti-vaccine people are celebrating this because they firmly see Weldon as an ally,” said Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy researcher at the University of California Law-San Francisco. “In Congress he believed that vaccines caused autism, and he tried to promote that belief.”
Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dr. Dave Weldon, who served in Congress from 1995 to 2009, at a rally for Donald Trump on July 14 in Melbourne, Florida.
Kennedy and Weldon ‘in the driver’s seat’
In a Friday post on Truth Social about Weldon’s nomination, Trump said the current health of Americans is “critical” and that the CDC must “take action and correct past mistakes.”
It’s unclear what Kennedy or Weldon, if confirmed, would do with vaccines that have already been approved or with the agency in general, although Kennedy told NBC News this month that despite previous comments, he “wouldn’t take anyone’s vaccines away.”
Still, Kennedy and Weldon could have a huge influence on the way vaccines are recommended in the US, including for children.
The CDC provides vaccine recommendations for the public, including the childhood vaccination schedule, which is followed by schools and parents. It covers vaccinations for diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, polio and hepatitis, and is updated annually.
Typically, the CDC director follows recommendations developed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, an outside group of more than a dozen pediatricians, public health experts and vaccine researchers, said Jennifer Kates, director of the Global Health & HIV Policy Program. at KFF, a health policy research group. The ACIP was founded in 1964 and, in addition to vaccines for children, also advises on vaccines for adults, such as those against flu, shingles and Covid, vaccine recommendations for travelers and provides guidance on disease outbreaks.
However, Kates said the CDC director has the authority to decide whether to accept these recommendations, and the HHS secretary can choose who sits on the vaccine committee.
“This puts CDC and HHS in the driver’s seat in determining vaccine recommendations going forward,” she said.
States are not required to follow the CDC’s guidelines, but most do, Reiss said. States can also grant exemptions from immunization requirements for schools. The CDC recently reported that the percentage of immunization-exempt children attending kindergarten has reached an all-time high of 3.3%.
As HHS secretary, Kennedy could replace members of the ACIP with anti-vaccine advocates who make recommendations that the CDC approves, Reiss speculated. Alternatively, Weldon, as director of the CDC, could reject any ACIP recommendations that the administration disapproves of.
“If they do that, it is much less likely that states will follow the guidelines, otherwise it could be divided along political lines,” she said, with Democratic states still following the ACIP-recommended vaccines.
It also has important implications for insurance coverage: Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies must cover vaccines recommended by the ACIP.
“If the committee makes a different recommendation and does not recommend some vaccines, insurance companies will not have to cover them,” Reiss said. “Maybe they’re covering them up. They also had vaccines covered before the Affordable Care Act, but at that point it is in the best interest of their hearts.”
Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and a frequent target of anti-vaccine activists, said the CDC is vital because there are “a number of very serious infectious disease and pandemic threats looming in the U.S.”
“We see that H5N1 is accelerating in birds, in poultry and in cattle, and that needs to be all hands on deck starting January 20,” Hotez said. “Now we’ve seen a fivefold increase in whooping cough, these measles outbreaks, in the last year.”
Cases of whooping cough, commonly known as whooping cough, are at their highest level in a decade in the US, according to data from the CDC.
A recent report from the World Health Organization and the CDC shows that the number of measles cases worldwide will increase to 10.3 million by 2023. In 2023, more than 100,000 people around the world would die from measles, mostly children under the age of five.
“Who is going to manage this?” Hotez asked.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
