The White House is planning to withdraw the nomination of Trump’s pick for CDC director reportedly because of his anti-vaccine views.
Dr Dave Weldon, a former congressman from Florida, was tapped by President Donald Trump to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and scheduled to have his confirmation hearing Thursday morning in front of the Senate Health Committee.
However, people familiar with the situation told Axios the Trump administration had concerns over Dr Weldon’s longtime criticism of vaccines and another said the White House pulled the nomination because they knew they didn’t have the votes.
As director of the CDC, Dr Weldon would have been in charge of vaccine policy, safety and messaging. He would have run the agency that oversees research on vaccines and public health, as well as responds to national and international disease outbreaks, like the Covid-19 pandemic.
One of the sources told the outlet Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr – who has himself pushed anti-vax sentiments – said Dr Weldon wasn’t ready.
Dr Weldon is an internal medicine doctor who served in Congress from 1995 to 2009, where he sponsored a bill that would’ve banned mercury from vaccines.
In 2007, Dr Weldon said ‘legitimate questions persist regarding the possible association between the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, and the childhood epidemic of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), including autism.’
A link between vaccines and autism is a false claim RFK Jr also promotes, despite decades of medical studies debunking the link and concluding vaccines are safe.
Former Congressman Dr David Weldon speaks in The Villages, Florida, in 2012 (file photo)
Additionally, mercury itself is not used in vaccines, but a compound that contains it, thimerosal, is used as a preservative in some shots to prevent contamination.
The compound was removed from all childhood vaccines in the US in 2001, according to the CDC.
Even still, studies have shown thimerosal is quickly eliminated from the body and therefore does not pose any health risk to the receiver. Multiple studies have found no link between the compound and autism or other health problems.
Dr Weldon as pick to run the CDC came as a surprise as the former lawmaker has kept a relatively low profile since a failed Senate run in 2012.
He returned to practicing medicine in Melbourne, Florida and joined the faculty of the Florida Institute of Technology’s biomedical engineering program.
