Former Congressman Dave Weldon addresses a small crowd in The Villages, Fla.
Brendan Farrington | AP
The White House has pulled President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, former Rep. Dave Weldon, the Senate’s Health committee confirmed Thursday.
The move came just hours before the former Florida lawmaker, a vaccine critic, was set to appear before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for a confirmation hearing.
Axios first reported the decision on Thursday. Robert F. Kennedy, who leads the Department of Health and Human Services, said Weldon wasn’t ready for the role, Axios reported. HHS oversees the CDC and all other federal health agencies.
But Weldon’s views align closely with Kennedy, a notorious vaccine skeptic. Weldon, 71, has long questioned the safety of certain vaccines, promoting the false claim linking vaccines to autism. In 2006, Weldon appeared with parents who claimed that the CDC had covered up evidence tying vaccines to children developing autism.
The CDC will reportedly re-examine that link under Kennedy despite decades of research debunking it.
While in Congress, Weldon sponsored a bill that would transfer responsibility for vaccine safety away from the CDC. He claimed the agency had a conflict of interest because it purchases and promotes vaccines. The bill never made it past committees.
Weldon is an internal medicine doctor who served in Congress for 14 years, from 1995 to 2009.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.
