An Intelligencer interview with former CDC Director Tom Frieden reveals the U.S. will need a lot of time to repair the damage the Trump administration has done to the U.S. Department of Health, even as more Americans get sick.
“I think if there’s one thing to be clear about with the actions of this administration from HHS to the devastating cuts to CDC, is that we are less safe, plain and simple,” said Frieden.
The Trump administration has laid off more than 2,400 people at the Centers for Disease Control — which still has no director — as well as an additional 10,000 employees at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The White House has also canceled or derailed billions of dollars in health grants and frozen crucial funding to medical institutions.
RFK Jr. recently ousted the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which sets national recommendations for vaccines, and he replaced them with eight hand-picked members, many of whom have expressed anti-vaccine views. Frieden said RFK misconstrued a report on ACIP conflicts of interests and wrongfully called the committee a rubber stamp, despite it routinely voting down vaccine approvals over the years.
“These were two absolute falsehoods that were really insulting and wrong to the people on the committee and misrepresented what the ACIP did,” said Freiden, adding that “what’s happening to the CDC is horrific.”
“You have to look very carefully, not at what the administration says, but what it does,” said Frieden.
For example, Kennedy claims he wants to address chronic disease, but ended the “menthol rule” that protected people against cigarettes on day two of the administration.
“It took lots of money from the tobacco industry in its campaign and it eliminated the CDC Office of Smoking and Health … ,” Frieden said. “This is a gift to big tobacco, and it’s going to guarantee more addiction, more disease, more death. The only winners are the tobacco industry and cancer cells. So you see programs that have existed for decades and people have spent their whole careers building ended overnight. It’s terrible.”
Meanwhile, all around the U.S., Friedman said “there’ll be outbreaks that don’t get stopped quickly. There’ll be cancers that develop that didn’t have to develop. There’ll be kids who get diabetes who didn’t have to get diabetes. There’ll be adults who have strokes and heart attacks who didn’t have to have those strokes and heart attacks.”
“That’s what’s hard to see about the damage that’s going on now,” he said.
Read the full Intelligencer report at this link.