A vocal vaccine skeptic is stepping into one of the most powerful public health jobs in America — and that has many experts alarmed. But here’s where it gets even more controversial: the new deputy at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has publicly questioned vaccine safety and discouraged their promotion in his own state.
Dr. Ralph Abraham, Louisiana's health chief and former Republican congressman, will become the CDC's principal deputy director, according to an official from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The move shocked many in the medical community, particularly given Abraham’s history of opposing mainstream public health guidance.
Abraham, a 71-year-old physician from Richland Parish, has long been a supporter of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The two share a skepticism toward vaccines that critics say undermines confidence in science-based medicine. In September 2024, Abraham referred to COVID vaccines as “dangerous” and said he backed re-examining the thoroughly debunked claim linking vaccines to autism.
The role of principal deputy director at the CDC is no small matter. It’s essentially the agency’s second-in-command, overseeing everything from nationwide disease surveillance to global outbreak responses. The position has been empty since February, when Dr. Nirav Shah, a respected public health leader under the Biden administration, resigned. Shah bluntly called Abraham’s appointment “atrocious.”
The CDC currently operates under the leadership of Jim O’Neill, an investor and close ally of Kennedy, neither of whom are doctors or scientists. Shah argued that bringing Abraham into the fold gives Kennedy’s leadership a veneer of medical credibility. “With Dr. Abraham on board, they now have a scientific face to legitimize their anti-vaccine agenda,” Shah said, warning that this could put public health at serious risk.
Abraham’s tenure as Louisiana’s first-ever Surgeon General has already drawn national scrutiny. Appointed by Republican Governor Jeff Landry in 2024, Abraham moved quickly to ban the state health department from promoting COVID, flu, and mpox vaccines. Just months later, after Kennedy became health secretary, he extended that ban to all vaccine promotion efforts statewide.
Those decisions coincided with the worst whooping cough outbreak Louisiana had seen in 35 years, rising to nearly 400 cases by the end of 2024. Two infants, too young for vaccination, died early in the outbreak. Despite this, Abraham’s department waited three months before alerting doctors or issuing a public warning. Shah said that delay revealed a troubling instinct: “When faced with a crisis, he chose to keep it quiet. In a pandemic, that could mean losing control of an outbreak entirely.”
Veteran CDC official Anne Schuchat, who spent more than three decades at the agency, including six years as principal deputy director, described Abraham’s new role as “scary.” She noted that such positions have historically been filled by career public health professionals with deep experience in crisis response. To her, this appointment signals a shift “away from health and toward ideology.” Vaccines, she emphasized, “save lives — and when political beliefs start overruling evidence, that’s when people get hurt.”
Abraham’s policy record extends beyond vaccines. In the Louisiana legislature, he supported a bill to remove fluoride from public water systems and another to make ivermectin more widely available for treating COVID-19 — despite extensive studies showing the drug doesn’t work against the virus. The fluoride measure failed, but the ivermectin expansion passed.
Health law expert Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University called Abraham’s selection an “irresponsible” decision. “He has little faith in scientific consensus and could further erode trust in one of the world’s leading public health agencies,” Gostin warned.
The Department of Health and Human Services has not announced when Dr. Abraham will officially start his new position. But his appointment is already prompting heated national debate. Should a person who dismisses established vaccine science lead one of the nation’s most critical scientific agencies? Or is this a step toward rethinking how health policy and public skepticism interact? Share your take — is this leadership shake-up a bold correction or a dangerous gamble for American public health?
