Trump yanks CDC nominee minutes before Senate hearing
WASHINGTON − President Donald Trump abruptly yanked his nominee to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday morning shortly before a scheduled Senate confirmation hearing.
A source familiar with the discussions said Trump pulled David Weldon's nomination because he did not have the votes to be confirmed.
Weldon had been scheduled to appear before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee at 10 a.m. ET. The committee announced a little before 9:30 a.m. that Weldon's hearing was being canceled because his nomination had been withdrawn.
Trump had announced his intent to nominate Weldon to head the CDC in November.
Weldon has a history of vaccine skepticism. The physician and former congressman has pushed a debunked link between the measles vaccine and autism. He was expected to say in testimony to the Senate that children should receive the measles vaccine, Bloomberg reported.
The U.S. is currently experiencing a measles outbreak.
In 2004, Weldon asked Congress to fund an autism research center to be headed by British researcher Andrew Wakefield, author of a later-discredited study linking autism to the MMR vaccine, STAT News reported.
That same year, Weldon sought to delay a meeting of the National Academy of Science's Institutes of Medicine over vaccine safety.
“At present, I have lost confidence in the ability of officials at the CDC to give an honest evaluation of the matters at hand,” Weldon wrote, STAT News reported. He claimed the independent health group had shown a “clear bias towards building confidence in the safety of vaccines rather than providing an objective presentation of the data.”
The CDC is now researching the safety of the MMR vaccine long after scientific studies have found no link with autism.
U.S. measles outbreak
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Democratic Pensions committee, said Weldon should never have been considered for the job.
“As we face one of the worst measles outbreaks in years thanks to President Trump, a vaccine skeptic who spent years spreading lies about safe and proven vaccines should never have even been under consideration,” she said in a statement.
Murray also criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has a history peddling conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism.
In his first public statement as the Health and Human Secretary after the measles outbreak which killed an unvaccinated girl in Texas, Kennedy, a founder of an anti-vaccine advocacy group, said the outbreak was “not unusual.”
“RFK Jr. is already doing incalculable damage by spreading lies and disinformation as the top health official in America,” Murray said.
Amid mounting pressure, Kennedy published an opinion piece on March 2 saying parents should consult with physicians about the MMR vaccine, which covers measles, mumps and rubella.
"The decision to vaccinate is a personal one," Kennedy wrote. "Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons."
Murray said the nominee to head CDC should be someone who at “a bare minimum believes in basic science and will help lead CDC’s important work to monitor and prevent deadly outbreaks.”