Vaccine critic quietly named CDC’s No. 2 official

What happened

The Health and Human Services Department confirmed Tuesday that Louisiana’s surgeon general, Dr. Ralph Abraham, has been hired as principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HHS “did not announce the appointment,” though Abraham’s start date was listed as last Sunday in a CDC database, The New York Times said, and “many CDC employees seemed unaware” the prominent vaccine skeptic had been named as the agency’s second-in-command.

Who said what

Abraham joins other “vaccine critics working at the CDC” under longtime “prominent anti-vaccine activist” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Washington Post said. Abraham ordered Louisiana’s health department to stop promoting vaccinations after being appointed surgeon general last year, and under his leadership the state “was slow to react” to its “worst whooping cough outbreak in three decades, waiting months to alert physicians and residents.”

With a virus like pertussis, or whooping cough, the Times said, “health departments typically quickly alert the public about outbreaks and set up mass vaccination campaigns.” A “large part of the principal deputy’s portfolio is emergency response,” Dr. Nirav Shah, who held that job until resigning earlier this year, told the Times. “Delayed notifying of the public of at least two pertussis deaths is not just unacceptable, it’s shameful.” Shah said Abraham, a family-medicine doctor and veterinarian, was “unqualified” for the position, adding that his “jaw hit the ground” when he learned of the appointment.

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What next?

The CDC has been without a permanent director since Kennedy fired Susan Monarez in August over vaccine policy disagreements, so Abraham will “essentially be running the agency,” the Post said.