EXCLUSIVE: Watchdog Urges Investigation of CDC, NIH Misinformation

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is seen in Washington in a file photograph. (Greg Nash/Pool/Getty Images)

The Biden administration should investigate scientific integrity violations committed by officials who made false or misleading claims about COVID-19 and other matters, according to a new letter from a watchdog.

Multiple officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for instance, falsely said that COVID-19 was a top-five cause of death for children and haven’t corrected the information to date.

In another instance, a top National Institutes of Health (NIH) official said that COVID-19 vaccines definitely provided better protection than the immunity enjoyed after recovering from COVID-19, citing a non-peer-reviewed CDC paper, even though many other studies show the opposite.

The misinformation violates scientific integrity guidelines in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its offices, which include the CDC and the NIH, the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) wrote in the May 9 letter.

The watchdog is urging the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to compel action on the past violations and to take steps to prevent future violations.

“Despite the thorough documentation and evidence in PPT’s complaints, there is no indication that HHS has taken appropriate action to either correct past violations or prevent future violations from occurring,” Michael Chamberlain, PPT’s director, wrote to Arati Prabhakar, director of the OSTP, and Alondra Nelson, a deputy director of the office.

“Accordingly, PPT brings the HHS’ years-long refusal to uphold President Biden’s scientific integrity mandates to your attention so that the American public can be reassured that these issues will be corrected and that their public institutions will live up to the high standards they profess,” he added.

PPT, which describes itself as a nonpartisan watchdog with the goal of helping the government become impartial and free from conflicts of interest, has sent documentation of the violations to administration officials in recent months, including evidence that Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, and other CDC officials falsely told the public that COVID-19 was a top cause of death for children.

The preprint study they were citing has since been corrected, although the officials haven’t notified the public that the information they conveyed wasn’t accurate.

One of the doctors who conveyed the false information said in emails obtained by The Epoch Times that “even 1 death from COVID that’s preventable is too many, regardless of how you count them.”

Chamberlain wrote, “The CDC’s use of an inaccurate study, repeated reference to false statistics, and pointed refusal to properly correct the record reflects a disregard for basic principles of scientific integrity and the right of the American people to make informed choices for themselves based on the best available information.”

In another example, the CDC acknowledged withholding data it had on COVID-19 out of concern that the data would be “misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.”

The CDC also recommended COVID-19 vaccines for young children despite clinical trial data showing a higher number of severe adverse events and subpar efficacy in the vaccinated Moderna group and uncertain levels of protection in the vaccinated Pfizer group. That indicates that the CDC recommendation was based on “political, rather than scientific, reasons,” the new letter states.

The CDC also didn’t place adverse events identified as possibly triggered by COVID-19 vaccines on surveys sent to vaccinated people, which is a breach of the integrity policies, the watchdog said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also violated policies by exaggerating the risk of vaping, according to the letter, resulting in the dismissal of what has become a way for people to quit smoking cigarettes.

The agencies and the White House didn’t respond by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

“Our government officials are always claiming that they ‘follow the science.’ Yet we have documented several instances of HHS ignoring its scientific integrity principles in apparent service to a political agenda,” Chamberlain told The Epoch Times in an email.

“The incidents we have documented are emblematic of the actions and decisions that have led to the rapidly declining trust in public health officials. Yet neither HHS nor OSTP, which is charged with upholding the Biden Administration’s exacting standards for scientific integrity, have seen fit to engage in any self-reflection but instead have chosen to pat themselves on the back while the public’s faith and trust in these officials continue their downward spirals.

“We hope that, by bringing these complaints to the attention of OSTP, some needed introspection and potentially even investigation can begin.”