Thursday the White House withdrawn the appointment of Dr. Dave Weldon, Republican and former member of the congress, to guide the centers for the control and prevention of diseases a few hours before it had appeared in a Senate confirmation hearing.
Reached by phone, dr. Weldon said he learned about the decision on Wednesday evening and that he had been said by an official of the White House that “had no votes to confirm” his nomination.
In a statement released later on Thursday, dr. Weldon, 71, blamed Senator Susan Collins, republican of Maine and member of the Senate Health Committee, and Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and president of the Committee, for the torpedo of his appointment.
A spokesman for Cassidy said that the senator “paid the hour” for the confirmation hearing. Mrs. Collins office contested Dr. Weldon’s account.
“I haven’t expressed concern to the White House. I had some reserves, but I certainly had not reached a final judgment, “said Mrs. Collins Thursday.
The withdrawal of the nomination of Dr. Weldon, who followed the concerns raised during a meeting on Tuesday with the Republican assistants of the Senate, is a significant setting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new secretary of health and human services.
Dr. Weldon and Mr. Kennedy has been known for 25 years and both have shared a profound skepticism of the federal regulatory approach to vaccine safety.
Kennedy is also facing a morbillo outbreak in western Texas and has attracted criticism to promote treatments such as vitamin A and liver oil of cod and the description of vaccination as a personal choice with unknown risks.
The decision to withdraw the appointment was reported for the first time by Axios.
It was not clear if the White House had a backup candidate. The CDC is currently managed by an interim director, Dr. Susan Monorarez, who previously was deputy director of a recently training biomedical research agency.
In an interview on Thursday, dr. Weldon said he was enthusiastic about the prospect of serving his country again and helping to restore public trust in the CDC
He also said he couldn’t wait to work with Mr. Kennedy on the Maha, or to make America healthy again, agenda to reduce chronic diseases among the Americans.
“It’s a shock, but, you know, in a certain sense, it’s relief,” said dr. Weldon. “Government jobs require a lot of you, and if God doesn’t want me inside, I’m fine with that.”
The Senate Committee for health education, work and pensions have canceled the hearing of Dr. Weldon, but two more nominated senate went to the complete Senate: Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya lead the Institutes of Health National and Dr. Martin Makary to direct the Food and Drug Administration.
(The hearing for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the candidate to manage the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, is scheduled for Friday.)
The abrupt retirement seemed to derive from events that took place on Tuesday, when Dr. Weldon met the members of the staff of the Republican Senate. In the declaration, dr. Weldon said that Mrs. Collins’ assistants were “suddenly very hostile” during the meeting, despite her “very pleasant” meeting with her two weeks earlier.
Dr. Weldon said that helpers “repeatedly accused me of being anti-vax”. But Mrs. Collins’ office said it was not true, and that the assistants had simply asked Dr. Weldon as he would respond to the accusations that opposed the vaccination.
According to a person who participated in the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity to share the details, the assistants were concerned that Dr. Weldon seemed badly prepared for the work and that he did not have a vision for the CDC
Wednesday, the day after the meeting, Kennedy had breakfast with Mrs. Collins, said dr. Weldon. He said Mr. Kennedy informed him that Mrs. Collins had expressed reserve on him.
Dr. Weldon was perhaps the least known of men appointed to guide the main agencies at the Department of Health and Human Services. But it was the one lined up more closely with Mr. Kennedy.
The Secretary of Health cited the criticisms of Dr. Weldon on the CDC together with his. Kennedy is “very troubled” to the decision to withdraw the appointment, said dr. Weldon.
“I go to a plane at 11 and I will go home and see the patients on Monday,” said dr. Weldon. “I’ll do a lot more money for my medical practice.”
His hearing had been presented to carry out between significant outbreaks of measles in Texas and New Mexico, who infected more than 250 people and caused two lives; a flu season that led to a record number of hospitalizations; and the potential for an epidemic of avian influence.
He repeatedly questioned the security of the measles vaccine and criticized the CDC for not having done enough to demonstrate that the vaccines are safe.
“They never did it in the right way,” he said in the declaration. He also praised the work of the British doctor discredited Andrew Wakefield, who erroneously proposed that the vaccines cause autism.
“We could be able to do research and understand why some children have a bad reaction” to the vaccine against the measles-Morte-Ruscello, wrote Dr. Weldon, despite the dozens of studies who have denied a connection. “Clearly, Big Pharma didn’t want me to the CDC who studied any of this.”
Dr. Weldon served the congress for 14 years, from 1995 to 2009. During his mandate, he prompted the office for the safety of vaccines from the CDC control, stating that the agency had a conflict of interest because it also acquires and promotes vaccines.
Dr. Weldon is also a faithful opponent of abortion.
Its distinctive legislative result was the amendment to Weldon, which prevents health agencies from discriminating hospitals or health insurance plans that choose not to provide or pay for abortions.
Like Mr. Kennedy, he had questioned the need to immunize children against hepatitis B, describing it as mainly a sexual transmission disease that afflicts adults.
He also claimed that abstinence is the most effective way to curb sexual transmission infections. The cases have increased in recent years and have started to show only signs of a possible recession in 2023.
In an interview with the New York Times at the end of November, Dr. Weldon said he worked “to get the mercury out of childhood vaccines”.
The CDC had published a research study that showed that mercury had not hurt, “but there were credible accusations that the CDC had mistakenly manipulated the data to exempt,” he said in the declaration.
“If confirmed, I was planning to return to the CDC database and investigate this statement in silence,” he said.
However, he described himself as a vaccination supporter. Both his adult children are completely immunized, he said in November. As a doctor in the florid coast, he said, prescribes thousands of doses of influence and other vaccines to his patients.
“I was described as an anti-Vaccino,” said dr. Weldon, adding: “I will give blows. I believe in vaccination.”