AlterNet: 'Grim': Former Trump FDA chief warns new administration 'will cost lives'

[Dennis Donovan]

AlterNet - 'Grim': Former Trump FDA chief warns new administration 'will cost lives'



Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration during Donald Trump’s first administration, has issued a stark warning: the president-elect’s current trajectory could lead to a “grim and avoidable resurgence of once vanquished childhood infectious diseases,” and it will cost American lives.

Dr. Gottlieb, who left the Trump administration before the COVID-19 pandemic, told CNBC on Friday he doesn’t believe Trump understands what Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president-elect’s nominee to head the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), will actually do if confirmed, and there will be no “guardrails” to protect the American public from his actions.

“I think if RFK follows through on his intentions and I believe he will, and I believe he can, it will cost lives in this country,” Gottlieb warned. He also warned that this could easily start “on day one.”

“You’re gonna see, remember, you’re gonna see measles, mumps and rubella vaccination rates go down. And like I said, if we lose another five percent [vaccinated], which could happen in the next year or two, we will see large measles outbreaks,” Gottlieb predicted, referring to the MMR vaccination the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends, one of more than a dozen on the CDC’s schedule.

“I don’t think they fully understand how Kennedy is going to translate his actions into policy,” Gottlieb explained, referring to both the incoming Trump administration and Congress. “I think some in Congress right now who are deeply skeptical think that they can manage this through things like appropriations riders, that’s not gonna be successful, because like I said, RFK can go in there with a stroke of a pen, disband ACIP, reconstitute it with like-minded people, issue a whole new bunch of recommendations.”

Gottlieb appeared to be referring to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a CDC entity that “comprises medical and public health experts who develop recommendations on the use of vaccines in the civilian population of the United States.”

/snip

[sakabatou]

1. We told people the leopards would eat their faces.

[bmichaelh]

2. Healthcare Disaster waiting to happen

Trump is nominating people with little or no expertise in their departments.

Also, some of the healthcare positions nominated are anti-vaxxers.

Vaccinations was one of the main factors to get us out of the last pandemic.

I do not have much hope that there will be enough Republican senators to vote down these disastrous picks.

[Takket]

3. Americans don't think the government actually does anything.......

they have little or no awareness of the science, research, rules and regulations that keep them safe that they never even need to think about.

A lot of people are going to die to teach America this lesson of how wrong they are.