Tag: Centers for Disease Control

Another Trump Nail in the Coffin of the CDC?

The advisory committee on vaccinations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were hand-picked by notorious vaccine-denier Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He just happens to be Trump’s pick for U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. He received the blessings of and confirmation by the U.S. Senate to serve in that capacity.

Photo of gloved hands holding a hypodermic needle
Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash

There are things I would like to say to and about the Senators who voted to approve Kennedy for that Cabinet position, but I will temper my remarks here. To give a person who for decades has promoted conspiracy theories about vaccines to Secretary of Health and Human Services was a travesty.

When the U.S. Senate approved the likes of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, and Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security… we get what they voted for: dangerous incompetence.

When people held their noses and voted for the likes of Donald J. Trump for U.S. President, we got what they voted for: dangerous incompetence and a colossal hatred for anyone who isn’t a rich, white male.

What we have now is a growing avalanche of physicians and other medical professions telling us not to trust anything that comes out of the CDC, the Federal Drug Administration, or Health and Human Services. Let that sink in!

On December 5, Trump said he supported the recommendations of the CDC vaccine advisory committee (many of whom are known vaccine deniers) in their recommendation that we abandon the 1991 CDC recommendation that all newborn babies in the U.S. receive the hepatitis B vaccine.

Apparently, Trump knows just as much about immunology as the quacks and Republicans on the advisory committee. Having a medical or any level of a health degree was not a prerequisite to be on the committee. Let’s just let any person off the street who supports Trump form new vaccinations policies and schedules for all Americans. What could possibly go wrong?

The hepatitis B vaccine decision flies in the face of medical data. In 1990, approximately 20,000 infants in the U.S. got hepatitis B. In 2020, twenty infants in the U.S. got hepatitis B. The vaccine not only prevents the liver damage caused by hepatitis B. It also prevents the liver cancer that can result from that liver damage.

It remains to be seen how this ill-advised new CDC policy will play out over the coming years. Will pharmaceutical companies limit production of the hepatitis B vaccine? Will parents who want their newborns to be protected from this highly-contagious disease be able to get the vaccine for their children? No one knows the answers to those questions.

A memo that Trump signed on Friday praised the new CDC recommendation and went on to endorse the new policy that instead of leading the world in health science, the CDC will now follow the lead of “peer, developed countries.”

I guess it’s fortunate that Trump’s children and grandchildren were all vaccinated as newborns before this 34-year-old mandate got scrapped last week. His future grandchildren and great-grandchildren might not be so fortunate.

When Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” we didn’t know he thought the CDC was part of the swamp.

We are left to wonder if the CDC will survive three more years of attacks by Trump and Kennedy.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC last week…

In a move that is so blatantly racist and narcissistic, the Trump Administration removed Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth as days that all our national parks could be visited for free and replaced them with… you are not going to believe this… Trump’s Birthday!

This is not a joke. This is the truth. You can’t make this stuff up!

Janet

Blaming mothers for Autism

Yesterday, President Trump and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – who has no education in medicine – announced that they had found the cause of autism: folate acid deficiency and mothers taking Tylenol.

Isn’t it amazing that hundreds, if not thousands, of researchers have not been able to find what causes autism over the last 60 years, but Bobby Kennedy, Jr. figured it out in a few months?

And what could be easier than blaming pregnant women? As if pregnant women don’t have enough to worry about, Bobby has now told them that it is their fault for their child’s autism if they took a Tylenol during pregnancy.

Black-and-white photo of a stethoscope
Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography on Unsplash

It was Dr. Trump who spilled the beans. What Kennedy had to say was anticlimactic Touting it in advance as the most important press conference of his career, Trump came out and in no uncertain terms gave medical advice to pregnant women.

I’m glad I don’t own stock in the company that makes Tylenol! It was obvious that Dr. Trump had never seen the word “acetaminophen” before. He stumbled over it horribly. I thought everyone knew about acetaminophen, but I guess not.

It seemed to be a new word for Dr. Trump, but that did not slow him down in warning pregnant women to just grin and bear it through pain and high fever. I guess like he would?

He said they can take a “small one” but only if they just can’t stand the pain or high fever. He went on and on, pronouncing “Tylenol” like it was a nasty word. Sort of like he says, “China.”

Nothing like terrorizing women who are currently pregnant by telling them that the Tylenol pill they took last week might cause the fetus they’re carrying to be born with autism.

Easy for Trump and Kennedy to say. It’s also easy for them to use their platforms to make sweeping proclamations based on junk science, which is the only “science” they know anything about. Isn’t it Trump who thinks windmills cause cancer?

Trump and Kennedy have put the Centers for Disease Control in shambles.

Kennedy loaded the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices with known anti-vaccine activists and at least one mathematician with no medical training whatsoever so the committee could make dangerous recommendations last week. The committee did not disappoint Kennedy. It’s like people used to say about computers: “Garbage in, garbage out.”

Instead of listening to physicians and researchers who have dedicated their lives to immunology, we now have a U.S. Government giving citizens medical advice based on fiction and lies.

This is what we get when we have a Republican-dominated United States Senate confirming the nomination of an anti-vaxxer who admits he has a worm in his brain to be U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. We got what the U.S. President and the U.S. Senate think we deserve.

In the so-called memorial service for Charlie Kirk on Sunday, Trump quizzed the audience about what MAHA stands for. “Make America Healthy Again.” What should have been a reverent Christian memorial service for an assassinated conservative activist turned into a political rally as soon as Trump stepped on the stage with pyrotechnics and Lee Greenwood belting out “I’m Proud to be an American.”

That shocking display set the stage for what Trump was going to say. At least we were forewarned, and no one should have been surprised by it. The surprise would have been if Trump had walked up to the podium and calmly delivered words of peace and talked about Charlie Kirk instead of talking about himself. That would have been shocking!

How strange for Charlie Kirk’s young children to be subjected to fireworks and hate speech at their father’s memorial service! Was that supposed to give them comfort? Oh… I forgot… it wasn’t about Charlie Kirk or his children. It was about Donald Trump. It always is.

Trump is so far removed from Christianity, he has no clue how offensive his behavior and remarks yesterday were to real Christians. I guess he forgot to wear his MAGA baseball cap. He ranted about hating his opponents. He ranted about “left-wing liberal lunatics.” He bragged about the crowd size.

I have been to more funerals and memorial services in my 72 years than I can count, but I’ve never heard a speaker at one of them talk about hating people or call half the population of the United States “lunatics.”

People keep saying, “This is not who we are.” I used to say that. I’ve uttered those words in 2025, but I can’t say those words now. America, that’s who we are. It’s time to face the truth.

When the President of the United States can openly talk like that and no one in the United States Congress says one word of criticism, that’s who we are.

We need to admit it. As long as half of us are in denial, we cannot address the problem. Step 1: Admit there is a problem.

Janet