When I worked in the US, I visited the Centre for Disease Control on a number of occasions. The faculty members were extraordinarily competent and influential, because of the universal and deserved respect for the CDC.

Pre-Trump, hundreds of millions of dollars were dispersed by the CDC to communities countrywide to help with local health initiatives.

Particularly important was the centre’s monitoring of infectious diseases and the collaborative research they participated in to develop and improve vaccines. Much of the research was conducted overseas as the institute’s mission was all about global health.

The CDC had long provided advice to the World Health Organisation on malaria control and smallpox eradication. When an Ebola outbreak occurred in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Libya in 2015, the CDC allocated 3000 staff to fight the deadly virus, with 1200 staff on the ground in West Africa.

Following the Ebola outbreak, the Global Health Security Agenda was established as a co-ordinated epidemic preparedness initiative with members from more than 60 countries, United Nations agencies and non-governmental organisations. The Obama administration funded US involvement generously with the CDC providing the majority of US contributions.

CDC staff monitor and design programs to combat malnutrition, or at least they did!

The first sign of a US withdrawal from global health came soon after Trump’s inauguration when he signed executive orders cancelling US membership of the WHO and the suspension of spending on all US foreign development programs vital to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and hepatitis.

I have previously detailed herein the effect associated with the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development. A total of 5200 contracts have been cancelled. This has stymied its ability to effectively deliver lifesaving aid, including those in countries devastated by conflict and famine, such as Sudan. One study predicted the cuts in USAID funding could lead to 14 million extra deaths by 2030!

It’s hard to imagine a worse choice for the position of US Secretary of Health and Human Services than Robert F. Kennedy Jr, infamous for his ignorant statements about the dangers of vaccines and scorn for “evidence-based medicine". Since his arrival in Atlanta, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been under pressure to abandon its traditional evidence-based approach to public health in America and across the world. But Kennedy, when disparaging the American Academy of Paediatrics stated that, “Trusting experts is not a feature of either a science or a democracy.”

In a prescient statement last week, Senator Bernie Sanders warned his audience that, “Mr Kennedy’s next target may be the childhood immunisation schedule, the list of recommended vaccines that children receive to protect them from diseases like measles, chickenpox and polio".

This week, we learnt from the state’s chief medical officer that Florida will remove all the current immunisation imperatives for children starting school. This is the chief health officer who throughout the COVID crisis warned Floridians to avoid COVID vaccination.

CDC scientists have been told told they can no longer publish their research data in “establishment left-leaning journals” such as the New England Journal of Medicine, arguably the world’s best.

Important Kennedy initiatives would see fluoride no longer added to water supplies, an immediate study of his hypothesis, propounded over years, that vaccines cause autism, and the banning of most colouring agents added to food products.

Now, cancelled CDC programs include those focused on the prevention of lead poisoning, environmental health, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

The huge untamed measles epidemic sweeping the US was of little concern to Kennedy; he suggested it could be treated with vitamins, steroids and cod-liver oil! Only after the death of two unimmunised children did he say publicly that there was value in measles vaccination immunisation.

Kennedy has “form” when it comes to measles protection. He has a long history of vaccine scepticism

In 2019-20, more than 5700 people became infected when a measles outbreak ravaged the island nation of Samoa. Some 83 people died, most of them children.

In the lead-up, a number of ads spread vaccine misinformation on Facebook, sowing doubt about the safety of the measles vaccine. Some were found to have been funded by the Children’s Health Defence, an organisation founded by RFK Jr.

Insiders claim RFK Jr will soon tell the world that research at CDC demonstrates that autism is, in fact, caused by vaccines. This man, who has no scientific or medical training, also insists that the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine contains aborted foetal debris, more nonsense which has some religious groups now querying whether it’s ethically acceptable to use such vaccines.

Kennedy has been particularly critical and sceptical about the use of mRNA-containing vaccines. This brilliant development that has made COVID vaccines so successful has many scientists attempting to use the technology for a host of other vaccines. He is attempting to block the development of such vaccines.

mRNA vaccines are devilishly clever. When a cell (us) is infected with a virus, let’s imagine the COVID virus, it instructs the infected cell to make copies of the invading virus which will leave that cell to infect other cells, potentially making us very sick. Scientists have discovered how to extract just a part of the genetic instructions needed to reproduce the whole virus (known as messenger RNA i.e, mRNA). When that is injected into us, we do make a lot of copies which are harmless, but nonetheless provoke an immune response to what is made. When the whole virus attacks us, we have a primed immune system which attacks that part of the virus it has been primed to recognise and, in so doing, kills the virus.

Kennedy claims the mRNA stays in our body and can cause numerous problems. In truth, mRNA is undetectable in the body three days after injection. Kennedy’s dangerously ignorant suggestions that COVID vaccines could cause serious harm led a deranged man to fire 500 rounds of ammunition at the CDC, killing a police officer.

Kennedy has sacked dozens of top scientists, replacing them, in many cases, with totally unqualified individuals whose only talent is to play the role of a Kennedy sycophant.

The pressure at CDC came to a head last week with the sacking of recently appointed CDC director Susan Monarez after she refused to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives”.

Monarez will be replaced by Jim O’Neill, deputy director of the Department of Health and Human Services, who has no medical or scientific training.

On the same day as Monarez’ firing, three senior officials resigned. They included the CDC’s chief medical officer, and two others with leadership roles in areas including vaccines and emerging diseases.

US Senator Bernie Sanders accurately denounced Kennedy in a New York Times editorial last week where he argued: “ Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign.”

As I write, US reports say more than 6800 current and former employees of the US Department of Health and Human services are demanding that Kennedy resign.

Health professionals wrote: “We warn the president, Congress and the public that Secretary Kennedy’s actions are compromising the health of the nation and we demand Secretary Kennedy’s immediate resignation.”

We are a long way from Atlanta, but a finger on our iPads can provide instant misinformation from Kennedy and other anti-vaccination promoters that is having a global effect. Many countries are reporting falling rates of childhood vaccination, including our own, where the number of children adequately vaccinated has fallen in each of the last three years.

Vaccine scepticism is now a global phenomenon driven by social media where many thousands of sceptics quote Kennedy and other non-expert commentators as they advise avoiding vaccination of all types. The effect is readily measurable when looking at the number of children who have available to them the full immunisation program that has so improved their health for decades. Immunisation rates are falling alarmingly. Here in Australia rates have fallen steadily over the last few years as is the case in the UK and the US. A major government-funded advertising campaign, correcting misapprehensions and nonsense theories, is urgently needed.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.