Episode Details

The CDC has suspended diagnostic testing for rabies, smallpox, mpox, malaria, and more than two dozen other infectious diseases because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has gutted the agency’s staff. The rabies team has lost half its people and will be down to one scientist by July, one person advising 330 million Americans on a virus that is 100% fatal without treatment. The pox virus team will have zero staff by summer. They’ve also suspended testing for leishmaniasis, Epstein-Barr virus, flu, COVID, and parasitic diseases. This is happening as the World Cup is coming to the US and the 2028 Olympics are in Los Angeles, millions of people from every country flying into American cities. A former public health lab director told the New York Times “if we have an emergency all of a sudden, God help us.” Kennedy has no medical degree, no public health experience, and no scientific training. He replaced the CDC’s independent vaccine experts with skeptics and rewrote the childhood vaccination schedule without telling his own staff. Public trust in federal health agencies has cratered. Modern medicine is humanity’s greatest achievement. And the man in charge is dismantling it because he read some blogs.