Official statement by Dave Weldon MD, intended but rejected director CDC

Regarding the recent withdrawal of my nomination for CDC¹Appendix to this article met diverse links

Twelve hours before my scheduled confirmation hearing in the Senate, I received a call from a White House aide telling me that my nomination to be director of CDC was being withdrawn because there were not enough votes to get me confirmed. I then spoke with HHS Secretary Bobby Kennedy who was very upset. He was told the same thing and had been looking forward to working with me at CDC. He said I was the perfect person for the job.

Bobby told me that earlier that morning he had breakfast with Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine who said she now had second thoughts about my nomination and was considering voting no. I had had a very pleasant meeting with her 2 weeks earlier where she expressed no reservations, but during my meeting with her staff on March 11 they were suddenly very hostile - a bad sign. They repeatedly accused me of being “anti-vax,” even though I reminded them that I administer hundreds of vaccines every year in my medical practice. More than 20 years ago, when I was in Congress, I raised concerns about the safety of vaccines in children, and for some reason Collins' staff stuck with it no matter what I said back.

There are 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the committee. so if you lose one, that's a problem if all the Democrats vote against it. what they have done. I can assume that the White House staff also had my nomination withdrawn because Republican Chairman Dr. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana also voted against. Ironically he is also an internist like me and I have known him for years and I thought we were friends. But he also said I was “anti-vax” or that I believed vaccines cause autism, which I never said (This isn't right, ed). He has indeed asked to withdraw my nomination. So he was a big problem and losing Collins too was clearly too much for the White House. The President is a busy man doing good work for our nation and the last thing he needs is a controversy over CDC.

Many people's concern is that Big Pharma was behind this, which it probably is. They are without a doubt the most powerful lobbying organization in Washington DC, giving millions of dollars to politicians on both sides of the aisle. They also bought millions of dollars in advertising in newspapers, magazines and on television. It could be suicide for any news program or organization to take on Pharma. Many media even pay lip service to Pharma. They also give generously to medical societies and colleges and universities. I learned the hard way not to touch pharmaceutical companies.

I heard that Big Pharma did everything it could to get rid of Bobby Kennedy but couldn't due to strong support from President Trump. Many people think that the big pharmaceutical companies fear me more than Bobby because of my credibility and my knowledge of science and medicine. So if they have to spend 4 years with Bobby, then certainly not with me. That's why they put a lot of pressure on Collins and Cassidy.

My great sin was that 25 years ago as a member of Congress I dared to take on the CDC and big pharmaceutical companies on two critical childhood vaccine safety issues. Hundreds of parents from all over the country had come to me, insisting that their child had been seriously damaged by the vaccinations. Some claimed it caused autism. The parents made two different claims. One was the fact that FDA, CDC and the pharmaceutical industry had allowed a huge amount of a neurotoxic preservative called thimerosal (a type of mercury) into the infant program and that thimerosal was the cause of the problem.

Under pressure from me and many other members of the House, both Democrats and Republicans, the CDC and the pharmaceutical industry removed the neurotoxic thimerosal, but it took them years to do so. One of the things that united us in The House was that none of us took money from the pharmaceutical industry. Bernie Sanders even joined us.

CDC eventually published a study claiming that the mercury did no harm, but there were credible allegations that CDC had mismanaged the data to exonerate itself. I planned to go back into the CDC database and quietly investigate this claim. Ironically, I was hoping to find no evidence of science corruption at CDC. Perhaps the public would be reassured, especially hearing it from me, and it could help improve the current somewhat tarnished image of CDC and the pharmaceutical industry.

But unfortunately, I also had the audacity to stand up to CDC and Pharma on another safety issue regarding childhood vaccines: the safety of the measles vaccine MMR. More than 25 years ago, a series of articles were published by a British gastroenterologist named Andrew Wakefield. He had seen many parents who claimed that after MMR their child had not only deteriorated developmentally, but had also become fussy and developed diarrhea. He did colonoscopies on the children and discovered they had a new form of inflammatory bowel disease. His research was later replicated and to this day he is credited with defining this form of inflammatory bowel disease in children.

Wakefield published a total of 15 articles. Only one was withdrawn. The article that caused the great controversy was published in Lancet. journal Lancet and one of the paper's co-authors was a highly respected Irish virologist named O'Leary. I knew O'Leary. I cared for AIDS patients before I went to Congress and I knew of O'Leary's reputation as a solid scientist. One of the complications affecting the AIDS patients was a form of cancer called Kaposi Sarcoma and O'Leary had shown that the cancer occurred in the AIDS patients when there was a co-infection with a second virus called Herpes Simplex Type 8.

Wakefield decided to give some of the colon biopsy samples to O'Leary, who was able to demonstrate using PCR technology that the inflammatory bowel disease biopsies from these children contained the vaccine strain of measles viruses. The live virus in the vaccine was believed to be weakened and not cause disease. This suggested that these children were unable to clear the viral particles and caused an infection in their intestines that may also have affected their central nervous system and caused the autistic features.

When this article was published, thousands of British parents were beginning to refuse MMR and there were outbreaks of measles. British health officials had their hands full. They decided to have Lancet magazine retract the paper and got O'Leary to retract his research findings. I was following all this closely and I had met with O'Leary and I had looked at his biopsy micrographs and his PCR findings. It seemed certain to me that the vaccine particles were causing the problem in these children, and I was surprised that O'Leary retracted his claims.

I called O'Leary and asked him why he did this. There was a very long meaningful pause. Then he said it had taken him many years to get to where he was, in the scientific community, and after another pause he said he had four small children at home. I had small children at home myself and I understood what he was saying. If he didn't, he would be fired. He would be ruined. British officials were not satisfied if all they could do was get the magazine to retract the article and allow Dr. O'Leary would retract his findings. They then decided to initiate proceedings to revoke Dr. Wakefield's medical license and that of one of his lead authors.

By this time, Wakefield had moved to the United States. Defending himself in court would have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars, so he had his license taken away. But his lead author Dr. Simon Murch was still a practicing doctor in England and decided to defend himself in court. The government lost and they were unable to take away his license. If Wakefield had had the money to defend himself, he would not have lost his license. The court documents clearly show that Wakefield and his co-authors had done nothing unethical or inappropriate and that their work may have been valid.

But that's all Big Pharma needed. They could let everyone know, and use the media to spread the word that the investigation had been dropped and Wakefield had lost his license. But I looked at the photomicrographs and it certainly looked like particles of the measles vaccine were infecting the intestines of these children.

The CDC was charged with the responsibility of replicating Wakefield's research and showing that the measles vaccine was safe, but they never did it properly. They decided to do the epidemiological studies instead of a clinical study. Again, as in the mercury study, claims were made that there were indicators of a problem with MMR. CDC was accused of changing the protocol and data analysis until the association disappeared.

Ironically, I spoke to Wakefield after this was all over. He agreed with me that we should vaccinate our children against measles. He thought the solution was to give the vaccine at a slightly older age, as they do in many European countries. Or we could do research and find out why some children respond poorly to the MMR. Clearly the big pharmaceutical companies didn't want me to investigate this at the CDC.

There are many more ironic aspects to all of this. I believe that the CDC is largely made up of very good people who really care about our country's public health, even though its credibility has been seriously damaged by the mistakes in the way the COVID-19 crisis was managed. 40% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans do not trust the CDC. Many also do not trust the pharmaceutical industry. I really wanted to try to make the CDC a better and more respected agency, and killing my nomination could have the opposite effect. Distrust may increase further.

I also have a lot of respect for the pharmaceutical industry. I practice internal medicine and I use medications in the care of my patients that were invented by American pharmaceutical companies. I can tell you firsthand that they are very effective and help many people. The new ones are outrageously expensive, but once they go off patent, they become very affordable and life-saving for many people with chronic and acute illnesses.

But unfortunately, I am viewed very negatively by the industry I use every day to help my patients. Bobby Kennedy is a good man who is truly passionate about improving the health of the American people. President Trump did the right thing in making him Secretary of HHS. Hopefully they can find someone for CDC who can survive the confirmation process, maneuver past the pharmaceutical industry and find answers.

Footnotes

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  Appendix to this article met diverse links