Julie Gerberding Has Resigned

CNN is reporting that the current head of the CDC has resigned effective January 20th. Mike Leavitt, current head of HHS asked for her resignation along with several other senior officials at CDC. Gerberding will be replaced by William H. Gimson, COO, will take over as interim director until a new director is appointed by the Obama administration.

Does this seem odd to anyone? Why would the current head of HHS get rid of the head of CDC and place an interim director rather than just leaving her there for Tom Daschle, new head of HHS, to do as he likes with the staffing? Is there some reason that Leavitt does not want Gerberding and her associates to be under the purview of and answering to, Tom Daschle and Barack Obama?

Leavitt explained his move this way: "The next phase of Transition involves the departure of our team on January 20, and the arrival of President-elect Obama's team later that day," his e-mail said. "In order to create a clear path for leadership transition, I am attaching a list of senior leaders who will become the acting heads of their respective agencies and offices (or in some cases, remain as heads of their respective agencies and offices) until the new administration appoints individuals to various leadership positions."

Is this normal? Are other agencies in the US government resigning and putting interim people in place on Jan 20th?

Don't get me wrong... I am thrilled to see her go. Trying not to be giddy about it frankly. But this strikes me as the same kind of thing as moving the Vaccine Safety Datalink overseas so it can't be accessed. Gerberding will have lots of damning information that she would have to give up to the new administration if she still worked for the US Government. Best move the source of that information out of the reach of those who are in position to ask the questions that Leavitt/Bush don't want asked.

(Clinton's CDC director stayed on almost two years into the Bush administration)

Anyone wanna start bets on where our friend Julie will land? Eli Lilly? Merck perhaps?

Well Good bye and good riddance Julie. I hope that the knowledge that a generation of children were severely developmentally disabled by your policies keeps you awake at night, just like the kids you made sick and their parents are awake at night, until you decide to do the right thing and tell the truth.

And for those of you interested in just why I hold Dr. Gerberding in such disdain, here is an overview of the premium quality Bullshit that she shoveled in regard to the autism epidemic that is crippling our country (and our family).

And here, again, is Julie in her finest hour:





UPDATE:

The AJC is reporting that the Obama administration asked for her removal. Sorta.

The headline reads: "CDC director Gerberding resigns at Obama’s request"

But the text of the article just says "the Administration" requested the resignation, with out saying if they were referring to the Obama administration or the Bush administration. And the next "administration" that they referr to in the following sentence is Bush. So it is not clear if the headline is correct and Obama asked for her removal.

“As part of the transition process, the Administration requested resignation letters from a number of senior-level officials, including Dr. Julie Gerberding. This week, the Administration accepted Dr. Gerberding’s resignation, effective January 20. As Dr. Gerberding noted in a November e-mail to CDC leadership, she has always expected that she would be leaving after the administration changes,” the written statement said..

The article goes on to describe some of the mess that was Gerberdings CDC.

UPDATE: So apparently this replacement senario is happening with FDA as well, along with most of the health agencies. Is it ONLY the health agencies?

Most health agency heads replaced before Obama

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most of the heads of the U.S. agencies under the Health and Human Services Department will be replaced by their deputies by January 20, when Barack Obama is sworn in as president, employees learned on Friday.

An e-mail issued on Friday evening listed all of the agency heads who will go, ranging from the director of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention to the head of the Food and Drug Administration.

Incoming presidents traditionally name the heads of agencies, especially with a change of party. Obama, a Democrat, is replacing Republican George W. Bush.

Obama has named Tom Daschle, a former senator, to be head of the Health and Human Services Department. Daschle has said he will act quickly to name permanent new heads of agencies such as the FDA.

Here is a list of some of the affected agencies:

FDA - Frank Torti, now principal deputy commissioner and chief scientist, will replace Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach.

CDC - William Gimson, now chief operating officer, will replace Dr. Julie Gerberding, who resigned this week.

Rear Adm. Steven Galson is already the acting U.S. surgeon-general.

Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services - Charlene Frizzera, now chief operating officer, will replace acting director Kerry Weems.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality - Dr. Carolyn Clancy will stay on as director.

Administration for Children and Families - Curtis Coy, now deputy assistant secretary for administration, will replace Daniel Schneider.

National Institutes of Health - Raynard Kington is already acting director after Dr. Elias Zerhouni resigned last year.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration - Eric Broderick will stay on as acting administrator.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

UPDATE: Salon.com's rundown of the damage she did:

But her tenure also proved controversial:

-- She instituted a large, morale-damaging reorganization of the agency that triggered an exodus of admired agency scientists. Gerberding said the changes made the CDC stronger. But in 2005, five previous CDC directors wrote Gerberding a joint letter expressing their concern about what was happening to the agency.

-- A 2004 medical journal article co-authored by Gerberding said obesity was about to overtake smoking as the No. 1 cause of death in the United States, but CDC officials later reported they had overstated the increase in obesity-related deaths by about 35,000. The mistake was blamed on a computer software error.

-- After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the agency was criticized for being slow to respond to survivors' complaints about formaldehyde fumes in trailers that had been provided by the government.

-- In 2007, she was criticized for going along with the White House's editing of her Senate testimony on the impact of climate change on health, which involved deletion of key portions citing diseases that could flourish in a warmer climate.

UPDATE: The Daily Kos parties as Julie Departs.

and

CDCChatter.net, unofficial hangout of CDC employees seems to breathing a collective sigh of relief. A few quotes:

So many takes, so little time. But the one I--and I dare say others--have found to be the most egregious and damaging is the placement of people into management positions that have absolutely no business being managers, and all the widespread fallout related to it. For example, being a good scientist doesn't automatically qualify someone as good manager material (nor vice versa, of course). Yet such square pegs seem to have been REPEATEDLY pounded into way too many round holes during Gerberding's tenure, to the detriment of many good people and amazing scientists, educators, analysts, programmers, etc. And really, "detriment" nowhere near captures the extent of the impact some have had to endure (myself included); in these cases, "destruction" is more than fair. Moreover, they often KNEW they were doing it. Even in the face of mounting internal and external scrutiny, mass staff exodus (either completely out of the agency or fleeing in droves from certain areas/managers within CDC to another), EEO complaints, direct staff protest, and so on, highly questionable people (to put it lightly) have been put in charge time and time again. As a result, I've painfully observed and myself experienced divisions, sections, teams and, most tragic of all, people, literally come apart at the seams.

Indeed it was the placement of people in key positions who had no background in the science and purpose of public health. An inordinate amount of attention was paid to centralizing decisions that effectively marginalized the judgement and experience of experienced qualified experts. Basic knowledge of public health functions was not a core value of the reorganization. It was more about creating endless levels of "executive" and other boards that have resulted in nothing of any matter happening at all. Enormous expenditures were engaged to centralize goals, dialogue, and decision making that would have been best left to those closest to the real work of this agency. At a time when inovative, young companies were moving towards flat hierarchy structures, the reorganization aimed to create a multi-layered structure that protected the power of the director and marginalized the highly trained (from new hire to experienced oldsters) who became "content experts" for communication strategies and the like.

Ding dong the witch is dead...
When every dictator falls the new leaders must clean out those who collaborated with the fallen regime. All JLu's Yes-men must be swept out and take the Coordinating Centers, Goals, SBU, and SSPU with them.

For six years, Julie has been the Great OZ, with all the smoke and fire. She goes no where, does nothing, without the Wizard behind the curtain- William Gimson. Bill, who just happens to have a Masters in Business Administration. Ironic how "Futures" took a "business" like structure, with some perverse modifications. How many examples do we need, before we realize that Julie was just the "face", while Bill was the "power"?
I hope that who ever come into this office, has a broom and sledge hammer. Dismantle the Julie-Bill (et al) "management" clones along with the deeper and wider silos of Futures. Knock down the Centers. While at it, remind the Information Technology people of their purpose, who they work for and that without the clients, they have no reason to exist. Same can be said going up the "food chain".

"Ding-dong..." isn't right. Its been, "Ignore that man behind the curtain!"

Senator Tom Daschle to Head HHS

...and this may be good for our kids.

Daschle fought the Eli Lilly rider in the Homeland Security Bill and fought the anthrax vaccine that was harming military personnel.

From David Kirby's HuffPo piece today:

By nominating Tom Daschle to head up the agency, President Elect Obama has selected a man who has demonstrated an unflinching willingness to question vaccine safety, and to fight for the rights of those people who believe they have been, or may be, seriously injured by certain vaccinations.

Senator Daschle is not anti-vaccine, but his record shows his willingness to question - and even oppose - vaccine makers and big pharmaceutical interests when it comes to protecting the rights of American medical consumers.

Certainly this is better than the guy that is running HHS now. Whose name I can barely remember because the only time his name comes up in articles on autism is when he is rumored to be telling friends in the church parking lot that HHS knows that the epidemic is due to the vaccines.

Is it Michael something...

Perhaps he is so forgettable to me is because our kids are so forgettable to him.

HHS Declares Emergency, Limits Anthrax Vaccine Legal Liability

Damn that Bush Administration is sneaky.

Apparently Secretary Michael Levitt, who is rumored to be telling people in his church parking lot that he knows that mercury in vaccines causes autism, whose department conceded that vaccines caused Hannah Poling's autism, and who will not release the Poling case files to the Polings so that they can understand what reasoning HHS used in making that determination, has declared a "public health emergency" citing the high risk of an anthrax attack on the United States. This "emergency" is set to expire in 2015.

The action that needed to be taken due to this "emergency"? That anthrax vaccine makers will have limited liability for their product. And not just the makers, from what I can see everyone from the CEO who green lights the vaccine, to the government official who mandates it, to the company that distributes it and even down to the guy who puts the needle into your body, they are all covered if you are disabled or killed by the shot.

Mind you it has been 7 years since the anthrax attack on this country, which the government believes came from one of its own researchers, but NOW we are declaring an emergency. I have seen nothing in the media that the US has evidence of a credible anthrax threat. And how exactly Levitt can predict that the threat will last seven years... well I am really interested in hearing more about the reasoning behind that.

1 in 150 children have autism and seventeen percent of children have a developmental disorder or delay and that is not big deal, parents should get used to it. But zero people are coming down with anthrax, and an emergency is declared and no explanation is given as to why.

This following the rash of reports of serious damage to military personnel due to the anthrax vaccine.

Well you heard him Pharma, one more product that you can make, get the government to force people to buy and you don't even have to make sure that it works or doesn't kill people! Man you guys have hit the jackpot! Start pouring money into that Anthrax R&D pipline!

Buy Merck!

UPDATE: The Kansas City Star is reporting that in addition to the anthrax emergency declaration:

"On Oct. 10, he declared health emergencies for smallpox, radiation sickness from the detonation of a nuclear device and poisoning from botulinum toxins, the active ingredient of Botox."

So in addition to the anthrax vaccine...

"The emergency declarations cover a host of antibiotics to fight anthrax infection, anthrax and smallpox vaccines, and a drug to stimulate white blood cell production in people harmed by radiation."

While Leavitt has not commented, his science adviser has,

"Health and Human Services is not invoking the law in response to any immediate threat, said William Raub, science adviser to Leavitt. “We don’t believe there’s anything imminent,” he said. “We’ve tried to be careful to not instill fear in people, (but) if we wait until the day of an event, valuable time is lost … and people could die.”

So they are admitting that there is not any intelligence that the US is facing a bioweapons attack. But they have redefined and "emergency" to mean 'the threat of an emergency'. This would be like looking at the weather map and seeing no hurricanes in the gulf, none forming in the pacific yet declaring a hurricane "emergency" in Tampa (because they could be hit by one in the next seven years) and start giving out FEMA funds to builders there.

Again... autism not an emergency, even though families, school systems and state governments are going broke trying to care for these children... anthrax is an emergency just because one day it might, maybe, eventually be an emergency.

The threat of an emergency is not an emergency.

It is astonishing to me that the Bush administration can so blithely remove the rights of citizens, with no reasonable justification, with apparently little input from the public as our community didn't know about this and actually pat themselves on the back as if they were doing a good thing.

This just makes me angry.

U.S. Limits Anthrax Vaccine Legal Liability

From Friday, October 17, 2008 issue.

By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Health and Human Services Department early this month moved to shield government, industry and business officials from lawsuits filed by those who have received the anthrax vaccine (see GSN, Sept. 5, 2007).

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt established legal immunity for public and private officials who oversee the production or distribution of the anthrax vaccine by declaring a “public health emergency” due to the risk of a bioterrorism attack. He said the emergency began on Oct. 1 and would run through Dec. 31, 2015.

U.S. law provides protection from lawsuits to individuals responsible for selected countermeasures, including antibiotics, during a declared emergency.

Under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, which President George W. Bush signed into law in December 2005, a health and human services secretary’s emergency declaration can limit financial risk for government program planners and the manufacturers or distributors of pharmaceutical countermeasures. One exception to this immunity would be willful misconduct on the part of covered individuals.

The ramifications, in this instance, could be to prevent individuals who have received one or more anthrax inoculations from taking grievances to court, based on claims that the vaccine caused severe adverse reactions or did not work.

The anthrax vaccine has proven particularly controversial following reports of serious adverse events, including some deaths, among U.S. recipients (see GSN, Nov. 21, 2005). In addition, there are some doubts about the vaccine’s efficacy in protecting people from developing anthrax after breathing in spores during a biological attack.

A 2003 lawsuit — based on lapses in the Food and Drug Administration’s drug-approval process for the vaccine — temporarily shut down the Defense Department’s compulsory anthrax shots program. Mandatory inoculations resumed in 2006 for personnel whose assignments are judged to put them at heightened risk of exposure to anthrax (see GSN, Dec. 16, 2005).

Leavitt’s declaration was published in the Federal Register and quietly heralded at the end of a two-page news release devoted largely to another anthrax-related initiative (see GSN, Oct. 2).

Among the activities now afforded liability protection are those “related to developing, manufacturing, distributing, prescribing, dispensing, administering and using anthrax countermeasures in preparation for, and in response to, a potential anthrax attack,” the HHS news release states. “This includes entities, such as large ‘big-box’ retail stores, retail pharmacies, and other private sector businesses, that help to deliver and distribute medicines.”

Health and Human Services argued the legal shield is essential to guarantee that countermeasures are there if U.S. citizens need them.

“Providing liability protection to all involved in such efforts will help ensure their full participation and bolster response efforts,” according to the news release.

“Preparedness is a shared responsibility that must involve all sectors of society, including the private sector, community groups, families and individuals,” Leavitt stated in the release. “We are using the authorities available to us to do all we can to support preparedness at all levels.”

The move comes as a pivotal advisory group convened by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prepares to decide whether state and local health officials should consider giving anthrax vaccines to as many as 3 million civilian first responders nationwide (see GSN, Oct. 16).

Millions of U.S. military personnel have already received the vaccines since the Pentagon’s shots program began in 1997, but the law prohibits service members or their families from holding the government liable for injury or death.

Now that the population of vaccine recipients could expand to include millions of civilians — who normally do have a right to take medical injury claims to court — federal response planners and government contractors might be growing nervous about their potential legal vulnerability, according to vaccine critics.

“There are people still getting ill from side effects and from the vaccine,” John Michels, an attorney in litigation targeting the Pentagon’s inoculation program, told Global Security Newswire this week. “When they expand this vaccine from the military population to a civilian population, they’re going to have people who sue.”

Emergent BioSolutions of Rockville, Md. — the nation’s only manufacturer of an FDA-approved anthrax vaccine — recently announced that Health and Human Services had ordered 14.5 million doses of its BioThrax vaccine, worth as much as $404 million. The company is already under a $448 million contract to produce 18.8 million doses of the vaccine.

The vaccine regimen calls for six shots over an 18 month period, plus annual boosters.

Michels said commercial interests appear to be playing a role in the legal immunity issue. He questioned whether there had been any bona fide escalation in the anthrax threat sufficient to justify the declaration of an emergency.

“We have no indications [now] … that we’re much more likely to be attacked by anthrax,” Michels said. “But [government officials] see the writing on the wall. They see … an erosion of [lawsuit] immunity for vaccine manufacturers as a result of widespread civilian use.”

Meryl Nass, a bioterrorism expert who has been highly critical of federal handling of anthrax vaccine issues, accused Leavitt of taking more interest in protecting bureaucrats from legal action than in protecting the public from health threats.

“How do you decide there is an emergency when there is no evidence of one?” she asked in e-mailed comments last week.

Noting the HHS secretary’s designation of “governmental program planners” as among those afforded legal immunity by the declaration, Nass asserted that the agency “designates an emergency as a means to protect itself.”

Leavitt’s declaration, though, states that “targeted liability protections for anthrax countermeasures” are “based on a credible risk that the threat of exposure to [anthrax] and the resulting disease constitutes a public health emergency.” The document does not offer additional details on the nature or level of threat.

A request that Health and Human Services elaborate on the basis for the public health emergency declaration went unanswered at press time.

Did HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt Say: "We know it's the mercury"?

Dan Olmsted reports a rumor.

I say let's get those congressional hearings underway and find out EXACTLY who knows what.

UPDATE: Welcome Orac readers! While you are here, I would like to invite you to take a moment and look at some of the research that supports the connection between vaccines and autism here: "No Evidence of Any Link"

Watch the video of Julie Gerberding, the head of the CDC admitting on CNN that vaccines DO trigger autism in a vulnerable subset of the population here: Julie Gerberding Admits on CNN that Vaccines can Trigger Autism

And read about my beautiful son, his regression into autism, and his on going recovery from autism via medical intervention here: Chandler

If you are interesting in exploring the details of why we are so insistent that vaccines are one of the most common triggers of autism, please don't hesitate to contact me directly at mail@adventuresinautism.com so that i can direct you to helpful resources.

Thank you for visiting!

Ginger Taylor, M.S.