US Health Bureaucracy: Honest Scientists are Bailing. By Marty Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the author of The Price We Pay, and a medical advisor to Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.
The calls and text messages are relentless. On the other end are doctors and scientists at the top levels of the NIH, FDA and CDC. They are variously frustrated, exasperated and alarmed about the direction of the agencies to which they have devoted their careers.
“It’s like a horror movie I’m being forced to watch and I can’t close my eyes,” one senior FDA official lamented. “People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.”
That particular FDA doctor was referring to two recent developments inside the agency. First, how, with no solid clinical data, the agency authorized Covid vaccines for infants and toddlers, including those who already had Covid. And second, the fact that just months before, the FDA bypassed their external experts to authorize booster shots for young children.
That doctor is hardly alone.
At the NIH, doctors and scientists complain to us about low morale and lower staffing: The NIH’s Vaccine Research Center has had many of its senior scientists leave over the last year, including the director, deputy director and chief medical officer. “They have no leadership right now. Suddenly there’s an enormous number of jobs opening up at the highest level positions,” one NIH scientist told us. (The people who spoke to us would only agree to be quoted anonymously, citing fear of professional repercussions.)
The CDC has experienced a similar exodus. “There’s been a large amount of turnover. Morale is low,” one high level official at the CDC told us. “Things have become so political, so what are we there for?” Another CDC scientist told us: “I used to be proud to tell people I work at the CDC. Now I’m embarrassed.”
Why are they embarrassed? In short, bad science.
The longer answer: that the heads of their agencies are using weak or flawed data to make critically important public health decisions. That such decisions are being driven by what’s politically palatable to people in Washington or to the Biden administration. And that they have a myopic focus on one virus instead of overall health. …
One CDC scientist told us about her shame and frustration about what happened to American children during the pandemic: “CDC failed to balance the risks of Covid with other risks that come from closing schools,” she said. “Learning loss, mental health exacerbations were obvious early on and those worsened as the guidance insisted on keeping schools virtual. … It failed this generation of children.” …
Most recently, back in May, the lack of clinical evidence for booster shots in young people created a stir at the FDA. The White House promoted it hard even before FDA regulators had seen any data. Once they saw the data, they weren’t impressed. It showed no clear benefit against severe disease for people under 40.
The FDA’s two top vaccine regulators — Dr. Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s vaccine office, and her deputy director, Dr. Philip Krause — quit the agency last year over political pressure to authorize vaccine boosters in young people. … “It felt like we were a political tool” a CDC scientist told us about the issue. …
As one NIH scientist told us: “There’s a silence, an unwillingness for agency scientists to say anything. Even though they know that some of what’s being said out of the agency is absurd.”
That was a theme we heard over and over again — people felt like they couldn’t speak freely, even internally within their agencies. “You get labeled based on what you say. If you talk about it you will suffer, I’m convinced,” an FDA staffer told us.
Another person at that agency added: “If you speak honestly, you get treated differently.” …
As of February, 75% of children in the U.S. already had natural immunity from prior infection. It could easily be over 90% of children today given how ubiquitous Omicron has been since then. The CDC’s own research shows that natural immunity is better than vaccinated immunity and a recent New England Journal of Medicine study from Israel has questioned the benefits of vaccinating previously infected persons. Many countries have long credited natural immunity towards vaccine mandates. But not the U.S. …
The fact that there is no public dissent or debate can only be explained by the fact that they are — or at least feel that they are — being muzzled.
The health bureaucracy is being politicized, just like the climate bureaucracy was in the early 1980s.
hat-tip Scott of the Pacific
