The CDC: Riddled With Metastatic Woke Cancer
/Last week the newly-confirmed head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Susan Monarez, was abruptly fired by President Trump, barely a month after receiving her Senate confirmation in July. Although Monarez was new to CDC as of the second Trump term, her career in high-level government positions runs back to through the Biden, Trump I, and Obama administrations.
Upon announcement of Monarez’s firing, the press was immediately filled with reports of “turmoil” at the agency. At least four high-ranking officials resigned in protest (even as Monarez tried to hang on). In addition, large numbers of staffers came forward (anonymously) to complain of the supposedly “anti-science” approach being taken by Trump and his HHS Secretary, RFK, Jr. Here is a piece from ABC News from August 28 with some choice quotes:
"How are we supposed to function as an agency if everything has to run through a man who doesn't believe in basic scientific principles?" a CDC staffer told ABC News.
“[W]e feel hopeless now," a CDC employee told ABC News. "Hopeless for our own research and work to continue, hopeless for our own personal futures, but most importantly hopeless for the future of America's children and what sort of awful future we are setting them up to inherit -- and for what gain or profit?"
Another CDC staffer said, "I'm glad to see the pushback from senior leadership standing up for public health -- I'm also upset and concerned about what this means for the fate of CDC and the health of the people we serve."
And then a large coterie of the staff held a “clap out” to show support for the departing officials. From the ABC News piece:
Supporters held signs that said "Fire RFK," "CDC saves lives," and "Leaders like these don't grow on trees." . . . The three officials received a warm welcome as they slowly made their way through the crowd, accepting hugs, flowers, and pats on the back.
I won’t try to stand up for everything (or even most things) that RFK, Jr. is trying to do. But, do you have the impression that CDC is a useful agency, “following the science” and protecting the public health? If so, you haven’t been paying attention to the news for the past several years (or more). In truth, CDC is a completely politicized and anti-science organization, thoroughly riddled with metastatic woke cancer. We’d all be far better off if it were eliminated entirely and we started over from scratch.
Start with the Covid debacle. Although CDC did not purport to issue mandates for things like lockdowns and masking on its own authority, it planted its flag firmly on the side of the supporters of those ineffective measures, and through guidance and recommendations gave support to the worst of the state governments that set about to treat their citizens like prisoners. Then, on September 1, 2020 (Trump was the President!), CDC issued its famous “eviction moratorium,” purporting to prevent anyone from getting thrown out of an apartment for non-payment of rent as a “public health” measure. The moratorium got extended several times during the Biden presidency, until struck down by the Supreme Court in September 2021 as being beyond the CDC’s authority.
The very public and consequential Covid disaster is undoubtedly the biggest source of the public’s loss of trust in the CDC. But there are many other equally valid reasons to hold the agency in contempt. For decades CDC has been engaged in aggressive bureaucratic expansion into areas having little to nothing to do with public health. Here is a piece from 2022 from Dr. Joel Zinberg, writing in the New York Post, detailing some of the more egregious examples of what he calls CDC “mission creep.” Excerpt:
The CDC’s priorities now include addressing “the public health consequences of the climate crisis,” “reducing racial disparities in public health,” addressing “the social determinants of health, conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play” and “increases in injury and violence prevention programs that will help to address the growing crisis of domestic, sexual, and gun violence.”
And now we get to my personal favorite, the October 2021 Report titled “Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts.” This one is pure Biden administration Peak Woke. Although it says on the cover that it is a product of the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges, it is very much a joint effort with the CDC. The list of “contributors and reviewers” at the end lists some 14 from CDC (compared to 29 from the AMA and only 7 from the AAMC).
How bad is this thing? A fair summary of “Advancing Health Equity” would be that if you just stumbled across it at random, you would be sure that it is a parody. It is not.
Start with the Preamble. There we find — you guessed it — the “land acknowledgement.” Excerpt:
The American Medical Association’s headquarters is located in the Chicago area on taken ancestral lands of indigenous tribes, such as the Council of the Three Fires, composed of the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi Nations, as well as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo and Illinois Nations. . . . We acknowledge their ancestors were forced out by colonization, genocide, disease and war. The AAMC and AMA also acknowledge the extraction of brilliance, energy and life for labor forced upon millions of people of African descent for more than 400 years.
Then there is the substance of the document. According to this AHE Report, the big problem causing health inequity is not deficient medical care, but rather the use of the wrong “narratives.” And the solution is to force the use of the correct narratives. The claim is that great harm has been done by use of the “dominant narratives,” also known as “malignant narratives,” that “undermine public health and the advancement of health equity.” These “dominant” and “malignant” narratives are the ones that contain such evil concepts as “meritocracy,” “individualism,” and “medicine itself”:
Central to this work is a consideration of our language, and the narratives that shape our thinking. As we explore in this guide, dominant narratives (also called malignant narratives), particularly those about “race,” individualism and meritocracy, as well as narratives surrounding medicine itself, limit our understanding of the root causes of health inequities. Dominant narratives create harm, undermining public health and the advancement of health equity; they must be named, disrupted and corrected.
The fundamental imperative here is to “move healthcare toward justice.” And the way to accomplish that goal is simply to replace “narratives grounded in white supremacy and sustaining structural racism” with morally superior narratives of “critical race theory . . ., gender studies, disability studies, as well as scholarship from social medicine”:
Narratives grounded in white supremacy and sustaining structural racism, for example, perpetuate cumulative disadvantage for some populations and cumulative advantage for white people, and especially white men. Patriarchal narratives enforce rigidly defined traditional norms, and reinforce inequities based on gender. Narratives that uncritically center meritocracy and individualism render invisible the very real constraints generated and reinforced by poverty, discrimination and ultimately exclusion. Yet a rich tradition of work in health equity and related fields, including critical race theory (defined in the glossary), gender studies, disability studies, as well as scholarship from social medicine, gives us a foundation for an alternative narrative, one that challenges the status quo, one that moves health care towards justice.
The AHE Report is 50 pages long, and it never gets any better. “Belief in scientific principles”? Who are they trying to kid?
Funny, but I never heard about any of the CDC staffers who have recently been protesting the firing of Ms. Monarez ever raising a peep about this absurd Report, let alone about CDC venturing into the “climate change” space, or about CDC sticking its nose into gun control.
I say, get rid of them all.