The health of our nation is at risk..........CDC

[RedEarth]

Exodus, morale shake CDC

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


An exodus of key leaders and scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has raised "great concern" among five of the six former directors who led the agency over the past 40 years. Their concerns, expressed in a rare joint letter to current CDC Director Julie Gerberding, come amid growing staff complaints about whether her strategic shifts in the agency's focus are putting public health at risk, according to interviews with current and former CDC officials and documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


Critics say the agency is changing to a top down management style that stifles science and that new layers of bureaucracy are being created that make agency operations more cumbersome.

The most visible sign of potential trouble at CDC is the loss of more than a dozen high-profile leaders and scientists since 2004. By the end of this year, all but two of the directors of CDC's eight primary scientific centers will have left the Atlanta-based federal agency. The wave of departures -- which numerous CDC leaders call unprecedented -- also includes the agency's top vaccine expert and world experts in several diseases. Just last week CDC's pandemic flu coordinator said he's leaving.

As the nation's 9-1-1 for public health, CDC is responsible for preventing and tackling outbreaks, bioterrorism and pandemics, along with the more routine, deadly threats of seasonal flu, HIV, rabies, injuries and obesity.

The urgency of these missions has current and former CDC scientists deeply concerned the agency's new strategy of looking at health issues broadly and reorganizing its divisions puts it on a course to potential disaster, causing it to lose its footing, like FEMA did before it faced Hurricane Katrina.


http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2006/09/09/0910MESHcdcmorale.html

[BlueManDude]

1. The powers that be in DC believe in faith-based science.

[indepat]

2. Repugs are so busy pertecting us from terraists that trifles, like public

health, must take a back seat and just languish.

[Nay]

3. Part & parcel of neocons' drive to discredit every govt agency.

By driving off good scientists, 'reorganizing' so that the CDC is more cumbersome...well, I can just hear the talk a few years from now --"oh, those damn govt agencies can't get anything done! Only private companies are good! Govt bad, private GOOOOD!"

May they all rot in the hottest hell.

[skyblue]

4. We're F'd. That is all.