Can Americans Trust the CDC?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a lot of new focus on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a U.S. government agency with about 11,000 employees (compared to the FDA's 18,000 employees).

Still, few are aware of the existence of the CDC Foundation, a separate, nonprofit organization, established by Congress in 1992 to seek private-sector donations and public-private partnerships. To those concerned about conflicts of interest, "public-private partnerships," which mix taxpayer funds with industry's, are likely the biggest red flags. To avoid such conflicts the CDC foundation says it relies "on CDC's governance and policies and its high standards of scientific integrity to guide every partnership we build," and that projects are given a thorough review and approval.

The CDC Foundation sounds well-funded. According to Netsuite, an Oracle website, Wells Fargo, SC Johnson, a consumer product manufacturer, and Kaiser Permanente each donated one million dollars in 2020 and Facebook pledged a $10 million match in donations. Other donors include 3M, Bayer and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Foundation has a close relationship with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reports Netsuite.

But the hefty donations have not fully escaped Congress' eye. In 2018, members of the House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee, a congressional spending panel, had serious questions about the way the CDC Foundation (as well as the NIH foundation) disclosed donors and donations according to Science and sought more information and explanations from the foundations. "[I]t's not OK to hide the identity of donors who have attached strings to their gift by labeling them as 'anonymous,'" the lawmakers said in response to many anonymous givers.

Concerns about such gifts and quid pro quos between industry donors and the CDC came to a head in 2017 when the newly appointed CDC director, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, was found to have accepted $1 million over a six-year period from soft drink maker Coca-Cola while serving as health commissioner of Georgia. The funding was for an anti "obesity" campaign which struck many as hypocritical. The CDC was later sued by the pro-transparency group, U.S. Right to Know, for refusing to reveal correspondence between agency officials and Coca-Cola employees.

The following year, the NIH grappled with similar conflicts of interest when a planned $100-million study on the effects of alcohol consumption was revealed to be funded by alcohol makers and a planned study on opioid dependency backed by drug makers.

The Checkered Past of CDC Directors

Some may remember that Dr. Fitzgerald, who had accepted Coca-Cola money, was forced to resign from the CDC after only six months because of tobacco stocks she had bought. But she is not the only CDC director whose actions have raised questions. Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDC director who preceded Dr. Fitzgerald, serving from 2009 was 2017, was also tarnished with an apparent conflict of interest according to Minnpost.

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