White House drops CDC director choice, cancels confirmation hearing
The White House has withdrawn its nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The nomination was pulled, according to what sources told The Associated Press, 'because it became clear Weldon did not have the votes for confirmation.' Axios, which first reported the nomination would be dropped, said that his views on vaccinations were a sticking point.
The former Florida congressman was supposed to have a confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Thursday, but it was canceled. Axios reported that '(Health and Human Services) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy himself said Weldon wasn't ready,' quoting one of its sources.
Hearings are still scheduled to consider the nominations of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for National Institutes of Health director and Dr. Marty Makary for commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
AP reported that Weldon was not only an anti-vaccine activist, but was a 'prominent critic' of the agency he had been nominated to lead. CDC 'promotes vaccines and monitors their safety.'
'The Atlanta-based CDC, with an annual budget of $17.3 billion, tracks and responds to domestic and foreign threats to public health. Roughly two-thirds of its budget provides funds to the public health and prevention activities of state and local health agencies,' according to Reuters.
The White House has not said why the nomination was withdrawn.
The debate over public health is heated right now as the U.S. grapples with rising cases of measles and also of avian influenza.
This is the first time that a CDC director must be confirmed. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., cosponsored the PREVENT Pandemics Act, which passed with bipartisan support and made the CDC director role one that must be confirmed by the Senate, starting this year.
Murray has been an outspoken critic of the nomination of a vaccine skeptic to head the agency and issued a statement on the withdrawal of Weldon's nomination, quoting what she told Bloomberg: 'In our meeting last month, I was deeply disturbed to hear Dr. Weldon repeat debunked claims about vaccines — it's dangerous to put someone in charge at CDC who believes the lie that our rigorously tested childhood vaccine schedule is somehow exposing kids to toxic levels of mercury or causing autism.'
Weldon is the third nominee who lost or left the bid to serve before a confirmation hearing. Former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, opted out of his nomination for attorney general. Chad Chronister, a Florida sheriff and politician who had been tapped to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, is the third who failed to make it to a confirmation hearing.
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