New role for controversial public health figure at CDC
Dr. Ralph Abraham, who as a state surgeon general ordered health officials to stop promoting mass vaccination, will serve as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s principal deputy director, reports BritPanorama.
In February, as Louisiana surgeon general, Abraham instructed health department staff to stop promoting vaccines for preventable illnesses. “While we encourage each patient to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination with their provider,” the health department “will no longer promote mass vaccination,” he wrote in an internal memo dated February 13, the same day Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
While the Department of Health and Human Services did not formally announce Abraham’s hiring, they confirmed his new role. Health newsletter Inside Medicine first reported the news. The CDC currently has no permanent director, following Kennedy’s ousting of Dr. Susan Monarez from the role last August. Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill, who is acting as CDC director, stated that the agency has had “mission creep” and needs to refocus its efforts.
“We want to … take the people we have and put them to their best use. And secondly, we are always recruiting. We are eager to hire wonderful scientists and data engineers and AI engineers and researchers and drug reviewers across the department, including CDC,” O’Neill said. “If you are talented, you care about health or human services – please come work with us.”
News of Abraham’s appointment comes just days after the CDC changed its website on vaccines and autism to assert that “vaccines do not cause autism is not an evidence-based claim.” Although Abraham has not explicitly labeled himself as anti-vaccine, he has echoed Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” rhetoric and expressed skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry and public health institutions.
In a statement this February, he remarked, “The solution to increased spending and declining outcomes in our country is unlikely to come in the form of a pill or a shot. Much of the solution will likely come down to the usual hard work of improving diet, increasing exercise, and making better lifestyle choices.”
The unfolding developments within the CDC call for scrutiny as the agency navigates leadership changes and ongoing public health challenges.
