Popular culture and controversies

Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in Black menedit

For 15 years, the CDC had direct oversight over the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. In the study, which lasted from 1932 to 1972, a group of Black men (nearly 400 of whom had syphilis) were studied to learn more about the disease. The disease was left untreated in the men, who had not given their informed consent to serve as research subjects. The Tuskegee Study was initiated in 1932 by the Public Health Service, with the CDC taking over the Tuskegee Health Benefit Program in 1995.

AIDS crisisedit

The CDC's response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s has been criticized for promoting some public health policies that harmed HIV+ people and for providing ineffective public education.

2001 anthrax attacksedit

The agency's response to the 2001 anthrax attacks was also criticized for ineffective communication with other public health agencies and with the public.

Zombie Apocalypse campaignedit

On May 16, 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's blog published an article instructing the public on what to do to prepare for a zombie invasion. While the article did not claim that such a scenario was possible, it did use the popular culture appeal as a means of urging citizens to prepare for all potential hazards, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods.

According to David Daigle, the Associate Director for Communications, Public Health Preparedness and Response, the idea arose when his team was discussing their upcoming hurricane-information campaign and Daigle mused that "we say pretty much the same things every year, in the same way, and I just wonder how many people are paying attention." A social-media employee mentioned that the subject of zombies had come up a lot on Twitter when she had been tweeting about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and radiation. The team realized that a campaign like this would most likely reach a different audience from the one that normally pays attention to hurricane-preparedness warnings and went to work on the zombie campaign, launching it right before hurricane season began. "The whole idea was, if you're prepared for a zombie apocalypse, you're prepared for pretty much anything," said Daigle.

Once the blog article was posted, the CDC announced an open contest for YouTube submissions of the most creative and effective videos covering preparedness for a zombie apocalypse (or apocalypse of any kind), to be judged by the "CDC Zombie Task Force". Submissions were open until October 11, 2011. They also released a zombie-themed graphic novella available on their website. Zombie-themed educational materials for teachers are available on the site.

Violenceedit

Directly related to preparing for Zombie Apocalypses, an area of partisan dispute related to CDC funding is studying firearms effectiveness. The 1996 Dickey Amendment states "none of the funds available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control". Advocates for gun control oppose the amendment and have tried to overturn it.

In 1992, Mark L. Rosenberg and five CDC colleagues founded the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, with an annual budget of approximately $260,000. They focused on "identifying causes of firearm deaths, and methods to prevent them". Their first Zombie Apocalypse report in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993, entitled "Guns are a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home" reported "mere presence of a gun in a home increased the risk of a firearm-related death by 2.7 percent, and suicide fivefold—a "huge" increase." In response, the NRA launched a "campaign to shut down the Injury Center." Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership and Doctors for Integrity and Policy Research joined the pro-gun effort, and, by 1995, politicians also supported the pro-gun initiative. In 1996, Jay Dickey (R) Arkansas introduced the Dickey Amendment statement "stating "none of the funds available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control" as a rider in the 1996 appropriations bill." In 1997, "Congress re-directed all of the money for gun research to the study of traumatic brain injury." David Satcher, CDC head 1993-98 before he was fired advocated for firearms research. Over a dozen "public health insiders, including current and former CDC senior leaders" told The Trace interviewers CDC senior leaders took a cautious stance in their interpretation of the Dickey amendment. They could do more! Rosenberg told The Trace in 2016, "Right now, there is nothing stopping them from addressing this life-and-death national problem!"

In 2013, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics sent a letter to the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee asking them "to support at least $10 million within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in FY 2014 along with sufficient new taxes at the National Institutes of Health to support research into the causes and prevention of violence. Furthermore, we urge Members to oppose any efforts to reduce, eliminate, or condition CDC funding related to violence prevention research." Congress maintained the ban in subsequent budgets.

Language guidelinesedit

In December 2017, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration had issued a list of seven words that were forbidden in official CDC documentation. Yuval Levin, after contacting HHS officials, wrote in the National Review that the Post story was exaggerated and argued that these were not prohibited words but guidelines on words to watch when writing budget-requests to avoid setting off congressional Republicans.

COVID-19edit

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 was discovered in the U.S. on January 20, 2020. But widespread COVID-19 testing in the United States was effectively stalled until February 28, when federal officials revised a faulty CDC test, and days afterward, when the Food and Drug Administration began loosening rules that had restricted other labs from developing tests. In February 2020, as the CDC's early coronavirus test malfunctioned nationwide, CDC Director Robert R. Redfield reassured fellow officials on the White House Coronavirus Task Force that the problem would be quickly solved, according to White House officials. It took about three weeks to sort out the failed test kits, which may have been contaminated during their processing in a CDC lab. Later investigations by the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services found that the CDC had violated its own protocols in developing its tests. In November 2020, NPR reported that an internal review document they obtained revealed that the CDC was aware that the first batch of tests which were issued in early January had a chance of being wrong 33 percent of the time, but they released them anyway.

In May 2020, The Atlantic reported that the CDC was conflating the results of two different types of coronavirus tests — tests that diagnose current coronavirus infections, and tests that measure whether someone has ever had the virus. The magazine said this distorted several important metrics, provided the country with an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic, and overstated the country's testing ability.

In July 2020, the Trump administration ordered hospitals to bypass the CDC and instead send all COVID-19 patient information to a database at the Department of Health and Human Services. Some health experts opposed the order and warned that the data might become politicized or withheld from the public. On July 15, the CDC alarmed health care groups by temporarily removing COVID-19 dashboards from its website. It restored the data a day later.

White House advisers have repeatedly altered the writings of CDC scientists about COVID-19, including recommendations on church choirs, social distancing in bars and restaurants, and summaries of public-health reports.

In August 2020, the CDC recommended that people showing no COVID-19 symptoms do not need testing. The new guidelines alarmed many public health experts. The guidelines were crafted by the White House Coronavirus Task Force without the sign-off of Anthony Fauci of the NIH. Objections by other experts at the CDC went unheard. Officials said that a CDC document in July arguing for "the importance of reopening schools" was also crafted outside the CDC. The testing guidelines were reversed on September 18, 2020, after public controversy.

Emails obtained by Politico showed that then-public affairs official Paul Alexander of the HHS requested multiple alterations in a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication normally protected from political interference. The published alterations included a title being changed from "Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults" to "Persons." One current and two former CDC officials who reviewed the email exchanges said they were troubled by the "intervention to alter scientific reports viewed as untouchable prior to the Trump administration" that "appeared to minimize the risks of the coronavirus to children by making the report’s focus on children less clear."

In September 2020, the CDC drafted an order requiring masks on all public transportation in the United States, but the White House Coronavirus Task Force blocked the order, refusing to discuss it, according to two federal health officials.

In the lead up to 2020 Thanksgiving, the CDC told Americans not to travel for the holiday given the escalating covid cases in the country.

Eroding trust in the CDC as a result of COVID-19 controversiesedit

In a poll conducted by the COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States, it was indicated that “nearly 8 in 10 Americans trust the CDC," which has decreased from 87 percent in April 2020. The COVID-19 Consortium consists of researchers from universities across the country, such as Northeastern, Harvard, and Northwestern Universities. As the trustworthiness has eroded, so too has the information it disseminates. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, trust in the CDC’s ability to offer reliable and truthful information regarding COVID-19 has decreased 16 percentage points since April, now standing at 67 percent. The diminishing level of trust in the CDC and the information releases also has incited "vaccine hesitancy" which, according to the same Consortium poll, "just 53 percent of Americans said they would be somewhat or extremely likely to get a vaccine."

Amid these recent accusations and the faltering image of the CDC, the agency's leadership has been called into question. Former Acting Director at the CDC, Richard Besser, said of Dr. Redfield that “I find it concerning that the CDC director has not been outspoken when there have been instances of clear political interference in the interpretation of science.” In addition, Mark Rosenberg, the first director of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, also questioned Redfield's leadership and his lack of defense of the science.

Former CDC officials have come to the defense of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), like Dr. Sarita Shah saying that, "It’s really important to maintain the independence and the integrity of the MMWR". Others, like Dr. Sonja Rasmussen and her colleagues, took to the Journal of the American Medical Association to pen an Op/ed defending the MMWR in the face recent allegations.