Florida vaccine skeptically as a proposed CDC director

Just a few hours before a planned hearing on confirmation on Thursday, the White House scraped the appointment of Dave Weldon, a former Member of Congress in Florida with a history of the rhetoric of Avaccine to guide the leading agency of the country.

Weldon, a doctor and republican who represented Brevard County's area from 1995 to 2009, was tapped by President Donald Trump in November to lead the centers for the control and prevention of diseases in Atlanta, which is at the forefront of a reaction to pandemics.

The Stat of the Health News site reported that the administration had concerns about Weldon's long history of the criticism of vaccine and had drawn its nomination on Thursday morning. Axios initially reported that his nomination was scrapped.

In an explanation of CBS News, Weldon said that his nomination had been pulled because of the opposition by the Republican US Susan Susan Collins, R-Main, and Bill Cassidy, R-La.

He also accused “Big Pharma” for his distance.

Weldon's medical office said he was not available for an interview on Thursday.

The decision to withdraw Weldon's name came in the middle of a growing measles outbreak in the United States, which already cost the lives of two people and widespread bird flu infections in chickens and cattle.

Trump's appointment of Weldon was celebrated by activists who spoke out against most routine vaccines in childhood, including measles and rubella.

“He is one of us !!” wrote the co-director of the anti-vaccine group Mississippi parents for vaccine rights on Facebook. “Dream becomes true.”

Weldon, a doctor in Florida before his election to the congress in 1994 and who now has an internal medical practice in Malabar, said in his explanation that he was not “anti-Vax”.

“More than twenty years ago, while in the congress I made some concerns about the security of children in childhood, Collins' employees suddenly got over it for some reason,” he wrote.

Weldon, co-founder of the Congress's autism caucus, introduced the “mercury-free vaccine law” in 2007 to restrict the use of the conservative thiomer into vaccines. The draft law died in the committee. The Thiomer was largely removed from vaccines in the early 2000s, although it is still used in some annual flu vaccinations.

The CDC, which is currently being headed by the incumbent director Susan Monarez, announced this month that she would initiate another study of alleged connections to vaccines and autism, although numerous studies do not find a link.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Ministry of Health and Human Service Secretary, has an even more extensive background to Avaccine.

Kennedy believed that Weldon was not ready to take on the tasks of the CDC director, Axios reported, although Weldon claimed that RFK was “very upset” at his distance.

“He said I was the perfect person for the job,” Weldon wrote.

Kennedy has given mixed messages about measles vaccines since his confirmation last month.

He said the shots “not only protect individual children from measles, but also to the immunity of the community.”

However, he also said Fox News that federal health officers “also look at our vaccine -injured children and look them into their eyes” and to enter dubious claims that the people affected the most “not good nutrition” or “a good training program”.

Originally published: March 13, 2025 at 10:42 a.m. Edt