The CDC has named Jim O’Neill, who had been serving as HHS deputy director for the past several months, as the new acting director of the organization. CIDRAP has the news.
At HHS, O’Neill was responsible for “helping [HHS Secretary] Kennedy oversee agencies including the NIH, FDA, and the CDC. O’Neill had previously worked at HHS from 2002 to 2008 in the George W. Bush administration.”
Additionally, Dan Jernigan, “who resigned from his post as head of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases,” told sources that he resigned because he was “forced to work with David Geier, a proponent of the long-discredited claim that vaccines cause autism who was disciplined in Maryland more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license.” Kennedy had “hired Geier to do a new study on the link.”
Senator Bill Cassidy, “who heads the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, called for the September ACIP meeting to be postponed to conduct oversight in light of allegations about the agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process that could pose a danger to children’s health.”
