Weldon nomination yanked amid vaccine concerns

WASHINGTON — The abrupt White House decision Thursday to withdraw former Republican Rep. Dave Weldon’s nomination to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes amid questions surrounding the agency, including its handling of a growing measles outbreak and reports that it will study debunked theories linking autism to childhood vaccines.

Lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s actions on comments on vaccines since getting confirmed, which likely complicated Weldon’s path to confirmation. Kennedy and Weldon had been close since Weldon, a former House lawmaker from Florida, left office.

The decision to withdraw Weldon’s nomination hours before he was scheduled to face the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions panel for his confirmation hearing appeared to stun Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., second in seniority on the panel. He told reporters he had no knowledge of the decision.

But Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Thursday she wasn’t surprised the White House withdrew the nomination, saying she had shared her concerns about him to the White House.

In a statement, Weldon, a physician, said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, had expressed reservations about his nomination, and her staff accused him of being anti-vaccine.

“I reminded them that I actually give hundreds of vaccines every year in my medical practice,” Weldon said in a statement. “More than twenty years ago, while in Congress I raised some concerns about childhood vaccine safety, and for some reason Collins staff suddenly couldn’t get over that no matter what I said back.”

A Collins aide disputed Weldon’s comments that staff said he was anti-vaccine. On Thursday, Collins said the news of Weldon’s nomination “came as a surprise to me.”

She said she did not express concerns to the White House. “I had some reservations, but I certainly had not reached a final judgment,” she said.

A person familiar with a recent meeting between Weldon and aides to Republican members on the HELP panel also disputed Weldon’s characterizations of his interactions with congressional staff.

Weldon appeared unprepared for the meeting, stating that he did not have a strategic plan for running the CDC and had been busy working on transitioning his medical practice, the source said.

In Weldon’s four-page statement, which was sent to the New York Times, Weldon defended his background on vaccines, but also defended Andrew Wakefield, the discredited anti-vaccine advocate whose papers linking vaccines with autism was retracted from journals, but not before it helped spark an anti-vaccine movement.

Cassidy pushback

The renewed focus on the debunked link between vaccines and autism by Kennedy has frustrated Senate HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidey, R-La., a physician who has pressed multiple health nominees on the issue.

In the committee’s confirmation hearing with National Institutes of Health director nominee Jay Bhattacharya, Cassidy pressed him on whether he would expend federal resources studying what Cassidy described as a resolved question.

After the hearing, Reuters reported that the CDC in fact planned to study the link.

Weldon said Cassidy was also considering voting “no” and had asked for his nomination to be withdrawn.

But in a statement, Cassidy disputed that account.

“I was looking forward to the hearing. I was surprised when Dr. Weldon’s nomination was withdrawn. His poor response to this situation shows that the pressures of being CDC director would have been too much,” Cassidy said in a statement.

‘Big Pharma didn’t want me’

Public health experts have warned Weldon would be a dangerous pick to lead the storied agency given his past comments about vaccines.

In his nearly 15-year tenure in the House, Weldon sought to remove vaccine safety research from the CDC’s domain. After he left, he became close with Kennedy, who reportedly put his name forward for the job, and continued promoting anti-vaccine theories.

Weldon’s nomination came as measles outbreaks grow across the U.S. The CDC is responsible for providing assistance to those outbreaks, including shipping vaccines to localities.

As of March 6, the CDC reported 222 measles cases from three outbreaks in 12 states. Kennedy has come under fire for linking the outbreaks to poor diet and health while promoting cod liver oil as a treatment.

Weldon blamed “big Pharma” for the withdrawal in the nomination, saying in a statement he would have investigated “why some kids have a bad reaction to the MMR,” or measles-mumps rubella vaccine.

“Clearly, big Pharma didn’t want me in the CDC investigating any of this,” Weldon said.

Weldon, who served in the House from 1995 through 2009, routinely questioned the links between vaccines and autism. He does not specialize in infectious diseases and has never formally worked in public health, having spent his career as a military doctor, internist and politician.

In 2007, he introduced a bill that would remove vaccine safety research from the CDC’s domain and house it in a separate HHS agency. Though the bill didn’t advance, some privately worry it’s indicative of the way he’d strip down the public health agency.

Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat on the HELP Committee, said she met with Weldon Feb. 20 and her meeting left her concerned, telling Bloomberg afterward that she was “deeply disturbed” to hear Weldon repeat debunked claims about vaccines.

In a statement, she said “a vaccine skeptic who spent years spreading lies about safe and proven vaccines should never have even been under consideration to lead the foremost agency charged with protecting public health.”

Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., a freshman HELP panel member, said she was pleased to see Weldon’s nomination withdrawn, saying she had concerns with his views that go against what scientists and medical experts have found.

“I think it’s the right direction to withdraw him and see whether we can find someone who believes in science and believes in medicine,” she said.