Senator Murray Statement on Nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon for CDC Director

Statement

The CDC is our nation’s first line of defense against disease outbreaks and public health threats—we need a leader who has real experience in public health, not someone who has spent years promoting vaccine misinformation and junk health plans. I am also deeply concerned by Dr. Weldon’s anti-abortion extremism—there is no reason to entrust the work of tackling our nation’s maternal mortality crisis and collecting data essential to understanding the deadly outcome of abortion bans to the man responsible for the Weldon Amendment that allows health care providers to deny women essential abortion care.

I can hardly believe it requires saying, but the absolute last thing we need at a public health agency advising the American people on vaccines and other key public health issues is someone who has been totally entrenched in anti-vaccine conspiracy thinking. Parents don’t want us to take a gamble on whether they can vaccinate their kid—not at HHS, not at FDA, and certainly not at CDC. To every one of my colleagues considering this nomination, I cannot drive home enough: this isn’t a game, this is not a political role without consequence, it has real power over whether Americans can get basic information and care to keep their families safe.

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