Donald Trump caused alarm in the medical community by picking anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head up the Department of Health and Human Services. But less noted was a similarly-minded pick to head up the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, profiled by The New York Times on Friday.
Last week, Trump announced the CDC nominee will be Dave Weldon, a doctor and former Florida congressman known for his anti-abortion views and for seeking to intervene in the Terri Schiavo brain death case. In addition to all these things, The Times noted, Weldon is an outspoken anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist himself.
"Over the years his views have aligned in many ways with those of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. Trump’s choice for health and human services secretary, and Dr. Weldon’s potential boss. The two have maintained a 25-year relationship," said the report. "Like Mr. Kennedy, Dr. Weldon, 71, has claimed that some children may develop autism when vaccinated against measles because of genetics or other factors, despite dozens of robust studies that thoroughly disproved the claim."
The autism-vaccination theory was most widely popularized by Andrew Wakefield, a discredited British gastroenterologist whose study purported to suggest autism was caused by an intestinal abnormality triggered by the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Follow-up studies failed to replicate these results, and it subsequently was revealed Wakefield had falsified his data, leading to the retraction of his paper and the loss of his medical license. Despite this, he continued for years after to push anti-vaccine activism.
The CDC is one of the most critical agencies responsible for tracking and containing pandemics, and was on the front lines of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed over 1 million Americans and required the development of multiple vaccines to get it under control.
Despite all of this, Kennedy, a former Democrat with some views that cut against the traditional GOP orthodoxy on food and medicine, has had mixed results in getting other key allies confirmed to other positions in the government; Trump reportedly snubbed his advice in his appointment for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.