The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will leave her post on the day that President-elect Barack Obama takes his, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Saturday (see GSN, June 11, 2007).
"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 Jan. 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 agency said Friday in an e-mail message to employees.
CDC Chief Operating Officer Bill Gimson will lead the agency on an acting basis until a new director is selected, according to the message.
Gerberding led the federal public health agency for six years. during which she was criticized for playing politics with science and for making decisions that would impair the CDC response to a health emergency. She countered that she had strengthened the agency's capabilities and had noted among its successes the response to SARS and monkeypox outbreaks and research on diseases such as bird flu (Alison Young, Atlanta Journal-Constitution I, Jan. 10).
Observers offered different thoughts on Gerberding's tenure as the first female director of the agency, which has 9,000 employees and an annual budget of $9 billion, the Journal-Constitution reported.
“In the last eight years, across the board in government, politics has been trumping science,” said Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America’s Health. Levi called for the Obama administration to return “to science as the basis of policy.”
However, U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said that Gerberding greatly expanded the agency's capabilities against bioterrorism. "She's done an outstanding job overseeing those things while continuing to guide the CDC on its mission of fighting disease around the world,” he said.
The agency should give the battle against naturally occurring diseases greater emphasis than biological terrorism, said Helene Gayle of CARE USA. Gayle is rumored to be one possible candidate for the CDC directorship, along with top health officials from Baltimore, Los Angeles and New York City (Schneider/Scott, Atlanta Journal-Constitution II, Jan. 11).