OPINION:
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the government official who directed the immunization program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until he resigned last month, is just the latest disgruntled government employee making the rounds on cable TV news shows to criticize the direction the CDC is taking.
Initially hired as deputy coordinator for White House monkeypox response, Dr. Daskalakis was part of the CDC’s stubborn refusal to identify the illness as a sexually transmitted disease, now known as mpox, even though it is spread almost exclusively by men who have sex with men.
When asked in an interview with NPR why mpox was not identified as sexually transmitted, Dr. Daskalakis responded, “I think what’s important is that [it] is ‘sexually associated.’ What’s important to me is less semantics and more that we’re giving the right advice.” The illness’ connection to the gay community cannot be denied, but the CDC appeared to channel the AIDS mantra of the 1980s, when the agency’s division for AIDS prevention suggested that we are all at equal risk of contracting AIDS.
The CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci have a long history of distorting research data in media interviews and press releases to shield the gay community and try to shape policy. As Randy Shilts’ 1987 book, “And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic,” points out, Dr. Fauci was a hero in his early days as an AIDS clinician at the National Institutes of Health.
Mr. Shilts also devotes several pages of his book to what he saw as a recurring problem with Dr. Fauci’s distortion of data to fit his agenda. On May 5, 1983, contrary to all the research data at the time, Dr. Fauci published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association stating that AIDS was transmissible by “routine close contact.”
Claiming that children could catch the deadly disease of AIDS from their families, Dr. Fauci wrote that if routine personal contact among family members in a household is enough to spread the illness, then AIDS would take on an entirely new dimension.”
Although Dr. Daskalakis has extensive experience in addressing diseases that disproportionately affect the gay community (he proudly lists on his resume that he led the effort to create the first Department of Health Float for the Gay Pride Parade in 2015), there is little in his vita that indicates he has done any research or writing in the area of vaccines and immunizations. Still, in his quest for an inclusive administration, President Biden appointed the openly gay Dr. Daskalakis in December 2023 as director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
Since his August resignation from the CDC, Dr. Daskalakis has dedicated himself to warning us all about the “dangers” posed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In an interview on ABC, Dr. Daskalakis said he fears the vaccine schedule may end for the hepatitis B vaccine, which is currently administered to all newborns. In an attempt to alarm parents, Dr. Daskalakis warned “that what they’re going to do is try to change the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine so that kids don’t get it when they’re born.”
He said that “it might not matter so much” for a mother who “is well connected to care and knows her hepatitis B status” and added that “if you have a mother who has not gone to prenatal care and comes in to deliver, we have one bite at that apple.”
Dr. Daskalakis is suggesting here that he believes every newborn needs a vaccination that prevents a disease that emerges in intravenous drug users, sexually active gay men, and women who have sex with men who have sex with men.
This overkill is typical of the CDC, which has taken much more than “one bite” of that apple. Britain, Germany, France and the Scandinavian countries offer the hepatitis B birth dose only to newborn infants at high risk, but U.S. doctors are reluctant to query mothers about their sexual histories, especially when it involves sexual relations with men who have sex with men.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has announced plans to drop all vaccine mandates, a move that may overreach in its scope. Still, it marks a meaningful shift toward empowering parents with greater authority over government-imposed health requirements.
It is time to acknowledge that health is a protocol and a relationship built on trust, discernment and care. Many of us are looking to Mr. Kennedy to rebuild the trust that Drs. Fauci and Daskalakis have so profoundly eroded.
• Anne Hendershott is a professor of sociology and director of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. She is the author of “The Politics of Envy” (Crisis Publications).
Please read our comment policy before commenting.