How Trump Is Muzzling the C.D.C.
Image The headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Credit... Tami Chappell/Reuters
To the Editor:
As former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention public health professionals, we are alarmed by the Trump administration's recent actions, which severely restrict the agency's communications and have compromised its ability to protect the health of the American people.
Late last month, the C.D.C. was ordered to cease communications with the World Health Organization and other agencies to comply with an executive order from President Trump. The C.D.C. and the W.H.O. have worked closely together since they were created in the 1940s to improve the health of Americans and save lives.
That work has included eliminating smallpox, nearly eliminating polio, stopping the first SARS epidemic, containing Ebola, mitigating the Covid-19 pandemic and protecting people from bird flu — to name only a few accomplishments. But now, for example, the C.D.C. will not have input into the W.H.O.'s meeting deciding which influenza strains should be targeted by next year's flu shot.
Domestically, C.D.C. employees are now severely restricted from communicating with anyone outside the government and from publishing anything that includes words like 'gender, L.G.B.T.Q., biologically male and biologically female,' and have been ordered to retract and revise existing publications using those words.
Certain C.D.C. websites with medical recommendations for practitioners and health officials have gone dark. Witness the C.D.C.'s recent posting and immediate deleting of data about bird flu spread from cats to people (news article, Feb. 8).
Many people are not aware of the work the C.D.C. does because it focuses on prevention, and it usually works: We don't see diseases and injuries that did not occur as a result of those interventions.
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