“A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s sweeping layoffs at several agencies, including HHS, saying that cooperation of the legislative branch is required for large-scale reorganizations.
Kennedy eliminated thousands of jobs in early April, paralyzing programs across the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and particularly in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, that monitored health threats, researched cures and investigated everything from toxic fumes in fire stations to outbreaks of gonorrhea.
The layoffs at NIOSH have halted the National Firefighter Cancer Registry, Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program, Health Hazard Evaluation Program, Respirator Approval Program and Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program. All are required by law, but their government websites explain they are no longer operating because of the layoffs.
“If the law requires you, the executive, to do this work, you have, in a back door way, thumbed your nose at Congress by firing the people who are actually necessary to get that work done,” said Max Stier, the president and CEO of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, whose mission is supporting the federal workforce. “The executive branch is supposed to execute — the name says it all. It doesn’t have the right to determine where money is spent and how much money is spent. ”
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told POLITICO that “critical initiatives under NIOSH will remain intact.””
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“while the administration has pledged that “essential services…will remain fully intact and uninterrupted,” and have repeatedly claimed that core programs will transfer to the yet-to-be-created Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA, interviews with staff and public notices on the CDC’s website show that the programs are no longer operational.”
“Vaccine “skeptic” David Geier has reportedly been hired by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a data analyst to oversee a new study probing the possible links between vaccinations and autism.
High-quality research and transparency are not likely outcomes from a project headed by Geier. Geier and his physician father, Mark, have published in a variety of obscure journal articles claiming that vaccines cause autism. Based on those sketchy publications, they began hiring themselves out as “expert witnesses” in hundreds of vaccine-related lawsuits. Mark Geier was stripped of his medical license by the Maryland Board of Physicians over dosing autistic children with his home-brewed treatments.
The Geiers asserted that their research had found that tiny amounts of ethyl mercury preservative (thimerosal) in some vaccines was the culprit behind the rise in autism diagnoses. Interestingly, thimerosal has never been used in the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine that has most widely been blamed for causing autism. However, excepting seasonal flu vaccines, thimerosal in the U.S. was removed from any other vaccines in 1999. Amusingly, the Geiers took note of that fact and published an article in 2006 claiming that autism rates were subsequently declining. As it happens, the rate of autism diagnoses has increased since then. Evidently tiny amounts of mercury in vaccines has nothing to do with autism.
In any case, the claim that vaccines cause autism has been comprehensively debunked.
“The problem with the Geiers’ research is that they start with the answers and work backwards,” said Dr. Steven Black, director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in Oakland, California, in 2005. “They are doing voodoo science.”
By applying his methodology in his new study of the putative relationship between autism and vaccines, Geier will doubtlessly and transparently get the answers that our new secretary of Health and Human Services thinks he already knows.”
“The federal teams that count public health problems are disappearing — putting efforts to solve those problems in jeopardy.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purge of tens of thousands of federal workers has halted efforts to collect data on everything from cancer rates in firefighters to mother-to-baby transmission of HIV and syphilis to outbreaks of drug-resistant gonorrhea to cases of carbon monoxide poisoning.
The cuts threaten to obscure the severity of pressing health threats and whether they’re getting better or worse, leaving officials clueless on how to respond.”
“Five months later, federal health officials, industry executives and the public health community say they’re more worried than ever.
Kennedy in his first seven weeks atop the Department and Health and Human Services has dramatically reshaped the U.S. health apparatus, eliminating entire agency divisions, abruptly shifting policy priorities and leaving the sprawling department in what six current and former employees described as an unprecedented state of upheaval.
The health secretary and his team forced out top scientists in charge of developing new vaccines and evaluating the safety of medicines, stripping away centuries of collective expertise and institutional knowledge. Government offices that manage key functions like ensuring safe drinking water and alerting Americans to contaminated drugs have been decimated.
In the meantime, Kennedy appointees have sought greater control over scientific decision-making in agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration — going against longstanding norms and roiling a health sector that accounts for nearly one-fifth of the U.S. economy.
“It’s a mess,” said one former senior HHS official granted anonymity to discuss internal matters. “What was once a very robust place to work, that was trying to lead on innovation, is gone. It’s just gone.”
The rapid overhaul, punctuated by last week’s mass firing of 10,000 employees, has left the HHS workforce traumatized and the broader health community in deep distress, according to interviews with nine current and former health officials, as well as five other public health experts and industry officials, most of whom were granted anonymity for fear of retribution.”
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““They got rid of all the people who made the place work,” said one health official. “It doesn’t seem to be achieving their aims. Unless their aim was just to cause chaos and torpedo morale.””
“The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) upcoming Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting on March 13 was abruptly canceled via email on Wednesday. The committee was to consider the selection of strains to be included in the influenza virus vaccines for the 2025–2026 flu season. This is the second vaccine-related advisory meeting canceled since Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. took over at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
No reason for the cancellation was given, and the committee members were warned against forwarding the email. It suggested that members decline to answer questions from media.
So much for Kennedy’s pledge earlier this month of “radical transparency.” He added, “We will make our data and our policy process so transparent that people won’t even have to file a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request.”
In addition to suggesting members of the FDA’s vaccine committee stifle themselves, the HHS will publish a notice next week in the Federal Register to eliminate public comment on that agency’s plans and decisions. While past meetings have been open to public scrutiny and participation, it is not clear if the new limits will apply to future meetings of the committee.”
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“Noting that the U.S. is currently experiencing one of the worst flu seasons in a decade, Infectious Diseases Society of America president Tina Tan warns that “cancelling a critically important Food and Drug Administration meeting that is vital to the development of effective flu vaccines for next flu season is irresponsible.” She adds, “Cancelling this meeting means vaccine makers may not have the vital information and time they need to produce and distribute targeted vaccines before the next flu season. If the FDA meeting is not immediately rescheduled, many lives that could be saved by vaccination will be lost.”
RFK, Jr.’s HHS promises that the FDA “will make public its recommendations to manufacturers in time for updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season.”
“There is a more realistic move Kennedy could take to address his concern about vaccine side effects: He could resuscitate the National Vaccine Program Office, which monitored vaccine safety with particular rigor but was shuttered under the first Trump presidency.”
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“The US began fluoridating drinking water in 1945. An estimated 209 million Americans now drink tap water that contains added fluoride. The intervention is considered a historic public health win: It dramatically reduces tooth decay in children and also reduces tooth loss in adults.”
“Political polarization shapes how people interpret risk and who they trust and listen to, which shapes what health services they access and what behaviors they partake in or don’t. This dynamic was a big reason Covid death rates so dramatically diverged between Republicans and Democrats: Party affiliation determined people’s willingness to get vaccinated, wear masks, social distance, and take other preventive measures, says Oberlander. Republicans were less likely to take these measures, and more likely to die of Covid as a consequence.”
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“Although left-wing Americans were more likely to take Covid’s risks seriously, Van Bavel notes Republicans outpaced Democrats on Ebola fears throughout the 2014 outbreak, during Barack Obama’s presidency. “It’s not that Democrats in America have a unique capacity to be attuned to the science and the risks of epidemics and pandemics,” he says; it’s that polarized people on the left and the right distrust the other party’s ability to handle any health threat.
Polarization is also creeping into our relationships with health care providers. A recent survey by communications firm Edelman found people feared the politicization of medical science as much as they feared the cost of medical care; 41 percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 said they wouldn’t trust medical advice from a provider who had a different political persuasion than they did, or would stop seeing them entirely.”
“RFK Jr. is not a scientifically literate, fact-based, competent, experienced, or measured person. He is wrong about HIV/AIDS; linking vaccines to autism; and the purported danger of thimerosal. On some things, he is correct: The COVID regime and the “noble lies”—which are still lies!—spread to the American public by our purported health authorities are despicable. We still need accountability. Considering which endocrine disruptors might exist in our environment and what unintended consequences might stem from SSRIs are valid research questions to which RFK Jr. has brought attention. Also, raw milk is great.
But in order to actually administer these programs, you need more than the ability to just ask questions and spread theories about what could be happening. You need some amount of competence. Perhaps RFK Jr. can take a pickax to the government waste that stems from certain companies being in bed with their overseers, but don’t count on it”