Mistrust in CDC shooting's wake
More than 750 Health and Human Services staffers signed a letter sent to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress this morning, warning that he's 'endangering the nation's health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information.'
A shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Atlanta headquarters on Aug. 8 was not random, the letter says. The suspected shooter, who law enforcement said was motivated by his distrust of the Covid-19 vaccine, fired multiple rounds into four buildings on the CDC's Atlanta campus. No CDC employees were injured. The shooter died at the scene after shooting and killing a DeKalb County police officer.
'The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization — and now, violence,' the letter warns.
Kennedy's actions endanger public health, they argue, pointing to Kennedy referring to the CDC as a 'cesspool of corruption,' saying mRNA vaccines failed to effectively protect against Covid-19 and the flu and then canceling $500 million in mRNA vaccine development projects, and disbanding the CDC's panel of vaccine experts and appointing replacements, some of whom have expressed skepticism about vaccines.
'These dangerous and deceitful statements and actions have contributed to the harassment and violence experienced by CDC staff,' the letter says.
In addition to HHS staffers who signed anonymously or with their full names, former CDC officials joined the letter, including Dr. Anne Schuchat, a former top official' James Mercy, who directed the CDC's violence prevention division; Tom Simon, who led scientific programs for the violence prevention division; Jay Butler, former deputy director for infectious diseases; and Dr. Barbara Marston, who helped lead the agency's Ebola response.
HHS did not respond to POLITICO's request for comment on the letter.
Key context: The letter comes after hundreds of NIH staffers sent Director Jay Bhattacharya a letter in June, laying out their concerns about the delay and termination of grants, staff firings and a spending slowdown since President Donald Trump's inauguration.
Nobel laureates, former NIH Institute and program directors and other leaders in the scientific community also signed the missive.
Bhattacharya, who has said that free speech is among his policy priorities, met with a small group of staffers in July to hear their concerns. At the meeting, he pledged not to retaliate against those who signed the letter, which was modeled after the Great Barrington Declaration that Bhattacharya co-authored in 2020 to protest pandemic lockdowns.
What's next: Staffers' request to Kennedy: Stop spreading misleading information about vaccines and affirm the CDC's scientific integrity. They also want Kennedy to guarantee the safety of the HHS workforce by ensuring HHS has fully functional emergency procedures and alerts.
Kennedy should also take 'vigorous action to remove high-profile online material targeting the federal workforce, such as the widely seen 'DEI watchlists,'' they added, referring to a website run by the conservative nonprofit American Accountability Foundation, which posts names and photos of federal employees online.
The foundation says the watchlist highlights the prevalence of diversity, equity and inclusion roles in government. Critics say it invites online harassment of private citizens.
The HHS staffers asked their boss to take action by Sept. 2.
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FUTURE THREATS
The artificial intelligence boom is ushering in chatbots that act — more and more — like people, our POLITICO colleague Aaron Mak reports.
OpenAI's GPT-4.5 can ace the Turing Test, which evaluates whether a machine can fool a user into thinking it's human. The bots also serve as therapists, and, at least in one case, a bot got engaged to a human.
Increasingly lifelike large language models are both a technological marvel and a conundrum for laws designed to regulate flesh-and-blood people.
With growing worries about AI's harms, from emotional manipulation to addictiveness, how do you assign liability to something that seems to have so much autonomy?
The anxieties were brought to a head last week when Reuters reported that Meta's internal policies permitted its AI to 'engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.'
Where Congress stands: The revelation triggered a bipartisan furor in Congress, POLITICO's Morning Tech reported this week. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said Meta 'has failed miserably' to protect children, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) accused the company of being 'morally and ethically off the rails.' Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) also launched an investigation into Meta on Friday. The company did not respond to POLITICO's request for comment.
But all these calls for regulation raise the question: Who or what, exactly, do you regulate?
It might not seem obvious that a company should be liable for its chatbots — each AI 'personality' adapts its responses based on interactions with a user, so they can act in unpredictable ways.
But if you view chatbots as products instead of synthetic people, the regulatory problem becomes a bit more familiar. Even if a company doesn't have an explicit policy allowing chatbots to engage in unhealthy conversations with children, for example, you can still require safety features to proactively mitigate such behaviors.
Ava Smithing, advocacy director at the Young People's Alliance, a youth advocacy group, told POLITICO, 'It's not about regulating a fake person, it's about regulating the real people who are deciding what that fake person can or cannot say.'
Congress hasn't proposed any laws to regulate AI companions. In the meantime, advocates are trying to apply existing product liability laws to restrain these anthropomorphic chatbots.
In the courts: In a landmark case that will set a major precedent in AI law, a Florida family is suing Character.AI over a chatbot that allegedly formed a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy, leading to his suicide. Matthew Bergman, the family's attorney, is tackling AI by adapting product liability strategies he picked up representing asbestos victims.
Bergman makes a novel argument in the suit that Character.AI intentionally designed its chatbots to be so lifelike that they could emotionally exploit users to get hooked on its service.
He's also contending that it was foreseeable that the bots would threaten young users' mental health. A federal judge in Florida rejected Character.AI's bid to dismiss the suit in May. The company declined to comment on the litigation but told POLITICO that it's implemented new safety measures for young users. The court held a discovery hearing in the case last week.
In the states: Without a serious effort from Congress, states have been taking the lead on chatbot regulations.
New York enacted a law in May requiring an AI companion to send regular reminders that it's not human and refer users to crisis centers if they're at risk of hurting themselves.
California is considering a bill to prohibit companion chatbots from rewarding young users at unpredictable intervals, a trick that slot machines use to keep gamblers addicted.
Lawmakers in Hawaii are also looking at legislation to restrict chatbots that mimic humans for advertising.
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