In a statement released on the day of his abruptly canceled confirmation hearing, Dr. Dave Weldon, President Trump’s initial nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said concerns that Big Pharma was behind the subversion were “probably true.”

“They are hands-down, the most powerful lobby organization in Washington DC giving millions of dollars to politicians on both sides of the aisle,” he wrote.

Weldon said that Wednesday evening, before the morning of his hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee, he had received a call from a White House assistant telling him his nomination had been withdrawn due to a lack of affirmative votes.

According to Weldon’s statement, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told him Sen. Susan Collins of Maine suddenly “had reservations” about confirming him despite having “a very pleasant meeting” with Weldon previously.

“I can assume that the White House staff had my nomination withdrawn also because the Republican Chairman Dr. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was also voting no,” Weldon wrote.

His claim that “politicians on both sides of the aisle” receive millions of dollars from pharmaceutical companies and lobbyists is undoubtedly true. Pharmaceutical companies spend almost $300 million on lobbying, far outpacing competitors such as the electronics manufacturing industry and insurance companies.

Why might Big Pharma have an interest in pressuring members of Congress to deny Weldon the job? You don’t have to look very far for the answer. Just review the hearings of every health official Trump has nominated to a cabinet position over the past month or so and count how many times “anti-vax” is said. 

As a congressman from Florida 25 years ago, Weldon had the “temerity,” as he said in his letter, to question the pharmaceutical companies on what he called two “critical childhood vaccine safety issues.” Weldon said he, like Kennedy, had been approached by hundreds of parents insisting that vaccines had caused injuries, including autism, to their children. Back then, the concern was over a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines known as thimerosal, which is considered a neurotoxin. 

Eventually the CDC and pharmaceutical companies agreed to remove thimerosal, though the preservative is still allowed in small amounts in some flu vaccines. The AI overview that pops up in a Google search claims “Extensive scientific research … has concluded that there is no credible evidence linking thimerosal to autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.” Could it be because the major scientific and medical bodies were incentivized not to find credible evidence?

Weldon asserted that when the “CDC ended up publishing a research study claiming the mercury had done no harm,” there were “credible accusations that CDC had incorrectly manipulated the data to exonerate themselves.”

Weldon also took on the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) shot, according to his letter, after coming across research by British pediatric gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield suggesting that many children had suffered a form of inflammatory bowel disease upon taking the MMR shot.

Wakefield sent samples to Irish virologist John O’Leary, “who was able to show … that the inflammatory bowel disease biopsies in these children contained the vaccine strain measles viruses,” Weldon wrote. The theory was that it “also might have been affecting their central nervous system and causing the autistic features.”

Measles cases rose after parents became hesitant to give their kids the MMR shot, due to Wakefield and O’Leary’s research. Essentially, Weldon concluded, O’Leary was pressured to retract his findings and Wakefield lost his medical license.

Weldon believes these two objections killed his shot at being CDC director. He has forever been tarnished as an “anti-vaxxer” despite his insistence that he just wants solid, unbiased research done on the safety of vaccines.

“I have learned the hard way don’t mess with Pharma,” he wrote.

It raises the question: Can Big Pharma be beaten? Can Kennedy and his cohorts at the multiple health agencies really change the way people view health? The entire medical-industrial complex includes not only pharmaceutical companies, but hospitals, insurance companies, and even large food conglomerates, and it propels a good chunk of the American economy. 

According to the Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey (ACS), the healthcare industry employs 22 million workers, or 14 percent of the American workforce. Healthcare employment growth is projected to exceed the national average, even though access to primary care physicians is decreasing, suggesting growth in medical bureaucracy and administration rather than direct care providers.

People seem to forget that sickness is a very lucrative business. Pharmaceutical companies, more than any other industry in the medical establishment, are selling you a product. They pressure you to buy — and doctors to sell — their products through commercials, complete with musical dance numbers.

Pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of money researching why people might be hesitant to inject a vaccine into their body, so they can better shut down those concerns. However, according to a report in The Washington Post last week, the NIH will be terminating or limiting grants to fund research related to vaccine hesitancy. It’s a good first step to undoing the propaganda consistently forced down our throats when it comes to so-called healthcare.

Dave Weldon would have been an excellent choice to continue that trend at the CDC. Let’s hope President Trump will find someone equally courageous to follow in his footsteps — someone who can’t be purchased.