Dr. Erica Schwartz’s Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday as the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed vaccine tensions and concerns about the independent agency.
In the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Chairman Bill Cassidy said that if she presents any equivocation on the efficacy of immunization, “I shall not be able to support your nomination, because when trust is destroyed, it’s hard to be effective.”
Dr. Schwartz, a deputy surgeon general in the first Trump administration and the beginning of the Biden administration, was nominated by President Trump in April.
She is among multiple others named or nominated to head the CDC since Mr. Trump returned to the White House last year. If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Schwartz will replace acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya.
In March of last year, Mr. Trump withdrew the nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon, a former congressman and critic of vaccines, hours before his scheduled confirmation hearing.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted Senate-confirmed Susan Monarez after a few weeks on the job after she resisted pressure to rescind certain COVID-19 vaccine approvals.
National Institutes of Health Director Jim O’Neill was removed as acting CDC director this past February.
In August, Mr. Kennedy’s chief of staff sent an email to Ms. Monarez demanding that all major decisions be reviewed by political leadership.
She said that the secretary gave her an ultimatum to either preapprove guidelines from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, dismiss career officials without cause, or resign. After she refused, she was fired.
When asked whether Dr. Schwartz would report to Congress about directives from Trump administration officials to implement policies that are unscientific or potentially harmful, she said, “I do not believe that the president or the secretary would ever do what you just mentioned.”
Mr. Cassidy, Louisiana Republican, said that Dr. Monarez was let go because “she would not make decisions that she felt she was instructed to make that she felt were going to be bad for public health.”
The senator said to Dr. Schwartz, “You can be CDC director and just take orders. We need a CDC director that will actually stand up to crazy, stupid things being said that undermine faith in immunization. Are you the person?”
When asked whether she would follow directions if instructed to stop promoting the flu vaccine during flu season, Dr. Schwartz would not say whether she would refuse the order. When continuously pressed with such questions, many of which included hypotheticals of political meddling, she said she would “never betray the science.”
Regarding the notion that autism is caused by vaccines, a theory pushed by Mr. Kennedy, she said she accepts much evidence that vaccines don’t cause autism.
Whether she would remove information on the CDC website suggesting a link between vaccines and autism, she would not commit to that.
“One in 33 children have a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, and we owe it to the American people to figure out why,” she said.
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