More Than 12 Senior Executives, Scientists At CDC Have Left Since 2004

[hatrack]

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 Dr. 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, making 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 that 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.

EDIT

http://www.ajc.com/today/content/epaper/editions/today/news_5430dba4748201210089.html

[lostnfound]

1. Why do Dick and George hate America?

Is this more politics over science? Or worse.

:grr:

[applegrove]

2. That is what the * WH wants. FEMA all over again. Now these brilliant

scientists will not be able to call private industry to be smart about how they do business.

So sad. Such a sad, sad time in America.

Those dollar a year men who went to Washington and Ottawa in WWII and stayed behind to be in government or industry..they really truly built the second half of the 20th Century into something quite amazing.

Oh..so sad.