CDC the latest federal agency to face leadership shakeup and cuts

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• Geoff Bennett:

  President Trump has put into place a very different team than his predecessors when it comes to public health and research, and the CDC is very much in the thick of it.

  The president just nominated Dr. Susan Monarez, the CDC's current acting chief, to become its new permanent director. That's after a prior candidate withdrew under pressure because of his vaccine skepticism. Five senior leaders at the CDC have announced their departures, and staff are anticipating cuts that could affect as much as a third of its work force.

  Lena Sun is a national reporter focusing on health for The Washington Post.

• Lena Sun, The Washington Post:

  Happy to be here.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So let's talk about the new nominee for CDC director. What should we know about her experience, her prior focus, and why President Trump settled on her as his pick?

• Lena Sun:

  She's the acting director, and she's been in place since January as the acting CDC director.

  I think what happened after the last nominee withdrew or had his nomination withdrawn — that was former Congressman Dave Weldon — is that the administration and in particular the president wanted someone who maybe would not be so out there in terms of controversial vaccine ideas.

  And that is what sank the previous person. He didn't get — he didn't have the votes in the Senate. In her time as acting, she has been kind of under the radar. She has seemed pretty willing to put in place the initiatives that the administration has wanted when they have wanted CDC to take down the Web site or make changes.

  She does not seem to have been putting up a big fuss. And maybe they see in her someone who can steer the ship and not cause too much of a ruckus. She does have a background in biosecurity, and she's very much into use of A.I. and technology. And she has been in government in and out for 20 years. She served in previous government positions.

  So I think they want someone who is a little bit more moderate.

• Geoff Bennett:

  With senior leaders stepping down after the announcement of her nomination, what are the concerns among career CDC staffers about her and the kind of leadership that she might bring?

• Lena Sun:

  I think the stepping down of those senior leaders was not directly tied to her nomination. I think that has been coming for some time because of the pressure the administration has put on the health agencies, the external pause, the freeze on travel, this very much clamping down.

  You notice we have had this enormous measles outbreak since late January. There has not been a single briefing about measles. That would normally have taken place under CDC. So, they have basically muzzled many of the health agencies because no external communication can take place without being cleared by HHS, the parent agency.

  I think the stepping down of senior officials is partly they see the handwriting on the wall with the Republicans in Congress. There is definitely going to be a push to scale down the scope and mission of the agencies. And in particular at the CDC, I think you will see definitely cuts to personnel and also downsizing of programs, if not elimination of entire centers.

  And the targets would be Global Health, the Injury Center, HIV prevention.

• Geoff Bennett:

  How detrimental might the staffing cuts at the CDC be?

• Lena Sun:

  Those RIFs, reductions in force, have not taken place yet. There's been rumors about them for weeks now. They have slashed the positions of many of those probationary employees that we have all been writing about.

  They're bracing for deeper cuts and we don't know how extensive those will be. If the reduction in force is something like 30 percent, which is one number that has been bandied about, that will be a big, big loss at the CDC.

• Geoff Bennett:

  I also want to ask you about the vaccine skeptic David Geier, who will oversee a study checking connections between vaccines and autism. What should we know about his past work and the concerns there?

• Lena Sun:

  David Geier is not a physician. David Geier and his father, Mark Geier, have a long history of publishing papers in which they push this debunked, long-debunked theory or claim that vaccines, including vaccines that have thimerosal, which is a preserve — mercury-based preservative, link to autism.

  Those claims have been around for decades, and they have been thoroughly and extensively debunked, disproven. There is no "there" there. And the fact that the federal government, the Health and Human Services Department, has hired someone like that to conduct yet another study is something that many public health and autism experts say is such a waste of time and dangerous, because resources are precious.

  They're cutting agency budgets. They're cutting personnel. And to take time and money to go do something that is already settled and to have it led by someone whose opinions and track record and background all point to debunking vaccines means that you're going in with a conclusion. And that is not how science is done.

  And, ultimately, they think the goal here is for the administration to completely harm vaccines, and that would be terrible short-term, medium-term, and long-term for the United States.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Lena Sun of The Washington Post, thank you for joining us tonight.

• Lena Sun:

  Thank you for having me.