Louisiana surgeon general who stopped promoting vaccination will be second in command at CDC
By Sarah Owermohle, CNN
(CNN) — Dr. Ralph Abraham, who as a state surgeon general ordered health officials to stop promoting mass vaccination, will serve as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s principal deputy director.
In February, as Louisiana surgeon general, Abraham instructed health department staff to stop promoting vaccines for preventable illnesses.
“While we encourage each patient to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination with their provider,” the health department “will no longer promote mass vaccination,” he wrote in an internal memo dated February 13, the same day Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS did not announce Abraham’s hiring but confirmed his new role. Health newsletter Inside Medicine first reported the news.
The CDC currently has no permanent director, after Kennedy ousted Dr. Susan Monarez from the role in August. Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill, currently serving as the CDC’s acting director, said this month that the agency has had “mission creep” and needs to focus on its original mandate.
“We want to … take the people we have and put them to their best use. And secondly, we are always recruiting. We are eager to hire wonderful scientists and data engineers and AI engineers and researchers and drug reviewers across the department, including CDC. If you are talented, you care about health or human services – please come work with us.”
News of Abraham’s appointment comes days after the CDC changed its website on vaccines and autism to state that “vaccines do not cause autism is not an evidence-based claim.”
Although Abraham has not explicitly said he is anti-vaccine, he has echoed Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” rhetoric and questioned trust in the pharmaceutical industry and public health institutions.
“The solution to increased spending and declining outcomes in our country is unlikely to come in the form of a pill or a shot,” Abraham said in a February statement. “Much of the solution will likely come down to the usual hard work of improving diet, increasing exercise, and making better lifestyle choices.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
