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Ralph Abraham, MD, the former Louisiana surgeon general, has been quietly named the deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a controversial pick to help lead the nation’s top infectious disease organization as the second highest-ranking CDC official. 

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Near the back corner of the local library’s parking lot, largely out of view from the main road, the South Carolina Department of Public Health opened a pop-up clinic in early November, offering free measles vaccines to adults and children.

Spartanburg County, in South Carolina’s Upstate region, has been fighting a measles outbreak since early October, with more than 50 cases identified. Health officials have encouraged people who are unvaccinated to get a shot by visiting its mobile vaccine clinic at any of its several stops throughout the county.

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Under ardent anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has named Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham as its new principal deputy director—a choice that was immediately called “dangerous” and “irresponsible,” yet not as bad as it could have been, by experts.

Physician Jeremy Faust revealed the appointment in his newsletter Inside Medicine yesterday, which was subsequently confirmed by journalists. Faust noted that a CDC source told him, “I heard way worse names floated,” and although Abraham’s views are “probably pretty terrible,” he at least has had relevant experience running a public health system, unlike other current leaders of the agency.

But Abraham hasn’t exactly been running a health system the way most public health experts would recommend. Under Abraham’s leadership, the Louisiana health department waited months to inform residents about a deadly whooping cough (pertussis) outbreak. He also has a clear record of anti-vaccine views. Earlier this year, he told a Louisiana news outlet he doesn’t recommend COVID-19 vaccines because “I prefer natural immunity.” In February, he ordered the health department to stop promoting mass vaccinations, including flu shots, and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns.

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For nearly 80 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was respected around the world for its authoritative, evidence-based leadership in public health.

But the CDC’s stunning reversal Wednesday—stating on its website that “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism”—shows the agency can no longer be trusted, multiple doctors and public health advocates told CIDRAP News.

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Today, the Washington Post reports that career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are quite upset to learn that the agency has updated the CDC website to resurrect the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism.

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Wired said it best: “A Quarter of the CDC Is Gone.”

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Americans’ trust in federal health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its childhood vaccine recommendations is declining, and more than twice as many people think the administration’s policies have made the country less healthy as those who think they have made the nation healthier, according to the latest Axios/Ipsos American Health Index poll.

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In Kentucky, patients drive up to two hours to see Dr. Manikya Kuriti, one of the few endocrinologists who serve the rural communities surrounding Louisville.

Kuriti’s husband, a pulmonologist, drives from Louisville to small hospitals an hour south and north, in Indiana, to help small teams treat critically ill patients.

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