WASHINGTON — The White House Thursday withdrew the nomination of former Republican Rep. David Weldon to be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Weldon, a longtime vaccine skeptic, had been scheduled to appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee at 10 a.m.
But just before the hearing began, the committee posted a notice on its website indicating that the hearing had been canceled.
The panel made no mention of Weldon during votes at a Thursday business meeting on Martin Makary, nominated to head the Food and Drug Administration and Jay Bhattacharya, the nominee to head the National Institutes of Health. The panel voted to approve both of those nominees.
A White House official confirmed that President Donald Trump was withdrawing Weldon’s nomination.
Weldon, a physician who represented Florida in the House from 1995 through 2009, has routinely questioned the links between vaccines and autism throughout his career. He does not specialize in infectious diseases and has never formally worked in public health, having spent his career as a military doctor, internist and politician.
IN 2007, Weldon introduced a bill that would remove vaccine safety research from the CDC’s domain and house it in a separate HHS agency. Though the bill didn’t advance, some privately worry it’s indicative of the way he’d strip down the public health agency.
Sen Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who serves on the Senate HELP Committee, said she met with Weldon Feb. 20 and her meeting left her concerned, telling Bloomberg news afterward that she was “deeply disturbed” to hear Weldon repeat debunked claims about vaccines.
In a statement, she said “a vaccine skeptic who spent years spreading lies about safe and proven vaccines should never have even been under consideration to lead the foremost agency charged with protecting public health.”
The withdrawal comes in the midst of a measles outbreak in western Texas and New Mexico among unvaccinated children.
