White House pulls Weldon’s nomination for CDC director before hearing

Key takeaways:

• Healio confirmed that the White House withdrew Weldon’s nomination to be CDC director.
• While in Congress, Weldon questioned the safety of vaccines, despite many studies demonstrating their safety.

The White House withdrew the nomination of David Weldon, MD, to be CDC director hours before he was to appear before a Senate committee on Thursday morning.

Weldon, a physician and former congressman, was scheduled to speak in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), but the hearing was canceled shortly before it was supposed to begin and his nomination was withdrawn, an HHS official confirmed to Healio. Axios was the first outlet to report that Weldon’s nomination was withdrawn, and Weldon himself later confirmed the move in a statement to reporters.

President Donald J. Trump selected Weldon to be the next CDC director in December, but the position now requires Senate confirmation for the first time.

‘My big sin’

In a statement published by The New York Times and other outlets, Weldon said he was informed Wednesday night that his nomination would be withdrawn because there were not enough votes to confirm him. He said HELP Chairman Bill Cassidy, MD, a Republican from Louisiana, and Maine Republican Susan Collins accused him of being anti-vaccine because he raised concerns about childhood vaccine safety more than 20 years ago while in Congress.

“My big sin was that as a congressman 25 years ago, I had the temerity to take on the CDC and big pharma on two critical vaccine safety issues,” Weldon wrote.

However, in a statement given to Bloomberg this week and posted on her website Thursday, Democrat Patty Murray of Washington, also a member of the HELP committee, said she was “deeply disturbed to hear Dr. Weldon repeat debunked claims about vaccines” in a meeting with the former congressman just last month.

In a previous interview about the president’s picks to lead key health agencies, Paul A. Offit, MD, director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told Healio that Weldon “holds a series of immutable beliefs that are incorrect” about vaccines, including that the MMR vaccine and thimerosal — a mercury-based preservative removed from childhood vaccines in 2001 — cause autism. Both claims have been disproven, according to the CDC.

Weldon, who is an internal medicine physician in Florida, authored multiple bills aimed at vaccines while he was in Congress from 1995 to 2009. In April 2007, he proposed creating an agency for vaccine safety research that would report directly to the HHS secretary, stripping that responsibility from the CDC. In a statement about the bill, he wrote that “legitimate questions persist regarding the possible association between the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, and the childhood epidemic of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.” According to the CDC, a study published in 2004 found no evidence of a link between thimerosal and autism, and nine studies have come to the same conclusion since 2003.

Vaccines likely to come up

Vaccines were likely to come up during Weldon’s hearing. Cassidy, a vocal supporter of vaccination, has pressed other health nominees on the topic, including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of supporting debunked claims about the safety of vaccines. After an unvaccinated child died from measles in Texas, Kennedy published an op-ed saying vaccination is “crucial” to not getting measles, but stopping short of recommending everyone get vaccinated. He said multiple times that vaccination is a personal choice.

Last week, Cassidy questioned Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, Trump’s pick to lead the NIH, about whether he would use NIH resources to study the already disproven link between vaccines and autism. Bhattacharya said more research should be done because there is “tremendous distrust in medicine and science coming out of the [COVID-19] pandemic.” Cassidy said federal dollars should not be spent on researching vaccines and autism because plenty of research has already showed there is no association.

“The more we pretend this is an issue, the more children we will have dying from vaccine-preventable diseases,” Cassidy said during the hearing.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America released a statement this week after Reuters reported that the CDC plans to study vaccines and autism, saying “significant federal resources will be diverted from crucial areas of study, including research into the unknown causes of autism, at a time when research funding is already facing deep cuts.”

“Outbreaks of deadly diseases like measles — which is preventable if a person is vaccinated — should be the top priority of federal health officials, not revisiting established science,” IDSA President Tina Q. Tan, MD, FIDSA, FPIDS, FAAP, said in the statement. “CDC’s study on the safety of vaccines could drive misinformation that leads to lower vaccination rates; more serious, vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks; and significantly weakened public health response.”

References:

• CDC. Autism and vaccines. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/about/autism.html. Updated Dec. 30, 2024. Accessed March 13, 2025.
• CDC. Thimerosal and vaccines.https://www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/about/thimerosal.html. Updated Dec. 19, 2024. Accessed March 13, 2024.
• Exclusive: U.S. CDC plans study into vaccines and autism, sources say. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-cdc-plans-study-into-vaccines-autism-sources-say-2025-03-07/. Published March 9, 2025. Accessed March 13, 2025.
• Introduction of the vaccine safety and public confidence assurance act of 2007. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Weldon_Statement_Vaccine_Safety_final.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2025.
• Measles outbreak is a call to action for all of us. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/robert-f-kennedy-jr-measles-outbreak-call-action-all-us. Published March 2, 2025. Accessed March 7, 2025.
• The New York Times. Dr. David Weldon on the withdrawal. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/13/health/david-weldon-cdc-statement.html. Published March 13, 2025. Accessed March 13, 2025.
• Senator Murray statement on White House withdrawing nomination of Dave Weldon. https://www.murray.senate.gov/senator-murray-statement-on-white-house-withdrawing-nomination-of-dave-weldon/. Published March 13, 2025. Accessed March 13, 2025.
• Scoop: White House to pull CDC director nomination. https://www.axios.com/2025/03/13/white-house-pulls-cdc-nomination. Published March 13, 2025. Accessed March 13, 2025.
• Weldon, Maloney introduce legislation banning mercury from vaccines. https://justfacts.votesmart.org/public-statement/238353/weldon-maloney-introduce-legislation-banning-mercury-from-vaccines. Published Feb. 8, 2007. Accessed March, 13, 2025.