The Danish American who doubted Covid shots is meant to lead drug regulation – but has focused on vaccines

As the US continues making unprecedented changes to its vaccination recommendations, one figure appears unexpectedly: Tracy Beth Høeg, a Danish American sports physician and epidemiologist who first made her name casting doubt on Covid vaccines in the pandemic and has focused upon possible deaths after Covid vaccination in her short tenure at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Health officials planned to announce radical changes to the childhood vaccine schedule earlier this month, aligning the US with Denmark’s immunization schedule, sources say – a major change that would put the US out of step with much of the world with no evidence for benefit. The announcement has been postponed until the new year.

Instead of Vinay Prasad, the top vaccines chief, Høeg is listed to speak at the event. She was recently named acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), the fifth person to lead the center this year.

  • LordMayor@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    7 hours ago

    The US FDA has lost almost all the high level people who had the expertise, experience and institutional knowledge that made it effective a respected.

    Now, they have podcasters and sports medicine people in charge. It would be almost comical if it didn’t certainly mean unnecessary deaths.

  • Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    9 hours ago

    Why do we allow single individuals to levy so much power in our regulatory bodies? Science doesn’t change very drastically on a 4 year basis, there’s absolutely no reason that a handful of dipshits should be able to rewrite this much public health policy.

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      8 hours ago

      Because when a lot of these departments were established it was advancing rapidly or were otherwise required to be able to rapidly move to counter rapidly evolving tech and economic systems. Problem is that stopped being true outside of specific tech fields about 40-50 years ago.

      • nymnympseudonym@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        7 hours ago

        Also the individual is usually just chairing a board of experts and simply coordinating their work… not micromanaging the conclusions

        That’s how it was when the administration was staffed with people who understood basic science

  • SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    6 hours ago

    Modern medicine in America will soon be available only for the very rich. The rest of us will be expected to get by on bible woo and horse dewormer.

  • WHARRGARBL@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    9 hours ago

    I love the idea of modeling our system on Denmark’s. Let’s start with their Universal fucking Healthcare!