Louisiana vaccine skeptic gets No. 2 CDC job

The Trump administration has tapped a former Louisiana health official who ordered a stop to promotions of mass vaccination events last winter to be the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's new principal deputy director.

Why it matters: The move begins to fill out the top ranks of the CDC, whose leadership was left in limbo after a wave of high-level departures this summer, including the August firing of former director Susan Monarez.

Driving the news: Former Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham was listed as CDC's principal deputy director on an internal email server, Inside Medicine first reported on Tuesday.

• Health and Human Services later confirmed his appointment, which is not subject to Senate confirmation.
• He would be the most senior medical professional at the public health agency, serving under acting director Jim O'Neill, a former Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur.

Abraham was a three-term congressman from 2015 to 2021 who spent 10 years as a veterinarian before going to medical school and then practicing family medicine, according to his official biography.

In February, Abraham issued an internal memo to Louisiana's health department that it would no longer use media campaigns or health fairs to promote vaccination against preventable illnesses, the New York Times reported.

• He has also publicly sparred with Senate health committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) over vaccines, saying he doesn't believe COVID-19 shots are safe and admonishing Cassidy, also a physician, to "stay in his lane."

• During the pandemic, he backed efforts to make the unproven COVID treatment ivermectin available without a prescription and recommended it to his own patients as a treatment for the virus, per the Shreveport Times.
• MedPage Today found that out of about 12,000 practicing physicians in 2021, Abraham was the seventh highest prescriber of ivermectin in the state, even though it had already been found to be ineffective in treating COVID.