Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Republican consultant and President Trump’s choose to steer the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, will seem earlier than the Senate well being committee on Thursday, the primary time an company director has been topic to the affirmation course of.
Dr. Weldon, 71, is maybe the least identified of the boys nominated to steer main companies on the Division of Well being and Human Providers. However he’s the one aligned most carefully with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s new well being secretary.
Dr. Weldon, like Mr. Kennedy, has lengthy questioned the protection of sure vaccines, and the 2 have maintained a 25-year relationship. The well being secretary has cited Dr. Weldon’s criticisms of the C.D.C. alongside together with his personal.
Dr. Weldon served in Congress for 14 years, from 1995 to 2009. His signature legislative accomplishment was the Weldon Modification, which bars well being companies from discriminating in opposition to hospitals or medical insurance plans that select to not present or pay for abortions.
He additionally argued that abstinence is the simplest approach to curb sexually transmitted infections. Instances have soared in recent times and solely started to stage out in 2023.
Dr. Weldon’s listening to takes place amid important measles outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico, which have contaminated greater than 250 individuals and claimed two lives; a flu season that led to file numbers of hospitalizations; and the potential for a chook flu epidemic.
He’s more likely to face powerful questions on his views on the measles vaccine, whose security he has repeatedly questioned, and on the C.D.C. itself, which he has sharply criticized for not doing sufficient to show that vaccines are protected.
Whereas in Congress, Dr. Weldon pushed to transfer the vaccine security workplace away from C.D.C. management, saying the company had a battle of curiosity as a result of it additionally purchases and promotes vaccines.
In an interview with The New York Instances in late November, Dr. Weldon mentioned that he had labored “to get the mercury out of the childhood vaccines,” however described himself as a supporter of vaccination.
Each his grownup kids are absolutely immunized, he mentioned. As a physician in coastal Florida, he prescribes 1000’s of doses of flu and different vaccines to his sufferers.
“I’ve been described as anti-vaccine,” Dr. Weldon mentioned, however added: “I give pictures. I consider in vaccination.”
Members of the Senate Committee on Well being, Training, Labor and Pensions have additionally questioned Mr. Kennedy — whom they later endorsed — in addition to Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Dr. Marty Makary, the respective nominees to steer the Nationwide Institutes of Well being and the Meals and Drug Administration.
(The listening to for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the nominee to run the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Providers, is scheduled for Friday.)
Aside from a handful of powerful questions from the committee’s chair, Senator Invoice Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, feedback from members have largely fallen alongside partisan strains. Dr. Weldon’s listening to is just not anticipated to be completely different.
Senator Cassidy, who’s a doctor, could press Dr. Weldon on use of the hepatitis B vaccine, which is run to kids at beginning.
Dr. Weldon, like Mr. Kennedy, has questioned the necessity to immunize kids in opposition to hepatitis B, describing it as primarily a sexually transmitted illness afflicting adults.
