HIV/AIDS expert Robert Redfield, a professor in translational medicine and virology at the University of Maryland, is President Donald Trump's top choice to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, according to multiple news reports.
Anne Schuchat, the CDC's principal deputy director, has been leading the agency in an acting capacity since the abrupt resignation on Jan. 31 of Brenda Fitzgerald, who left amid questions over her financial conflicts of interest.
Schuchat has also been viewed by many in the public health community as a strong contender.
Redfield was considered for the CDC director position in 2002 by then-President George W. Bush, who eventually put Julie Gerberding in the post. Gerberding, who led the agency until 2009, is now an executive vice president and chief patient officer in global public policy and population health at Merck & Co. Inc.
Redfield currently oversees a clinical program providing HIV care and treatment to more than 6,000 patients in the Baltimore-Washington area, according to information posted on the University of Maryland website. He also heads a care and treatment program under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR — an initiative launched in 2003 by Bush with a $15 billion initial investment aimed at combating the global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria epidemics, primarily for 15 of the hardest hit countries.
Trump, however, has sought to cut nearly $1 billion from PEPFAR and wind the program down — an action that Microsoft Corp. co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates was urging lawmakers to prevent in Washington last week.
Redfield served as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, a committee Trump dismantled in late December 2017, though the administration issued a notice stating the panel would be rebuilt. Six members of that committee resigned in June 2017, declaring in an open letter published in Newsweek that the Trump White House was pushing for legislation that would harm people living with HIV.
The CDC director does not require Senate confirmation, but Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., ranking member on the chamber's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and other Democrats on the panel demanded in a Feb. 28 letter to Trump that his next appointee meet certain qualifications, including prioritizing science over ideology.
"We intend to thoroughly scrutinize whomever you choose to ensure that she or he is an upstanding steward of public health who promotes policies that protect the health, safety, and security of our communities," they wrote, adding that the CDC's work should be "unimpeded by this administration's political agenda."
The news that Redfield had emerged as the leading candidate to run the CDC was first reported March 16 by Politico and the Washington Post.
Bills seek to ban 'gag' practices
A group of bipartisan lawmakers last week unveiled two pieces of legislation aimed at banning the so-called gag clauses, which prevent pharmacists from telling customers when they can pay less out-of-pocket costs for their prescription medicines by not using their insurance plans.
The Patient Right to Know Drug Prices Act — sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Bill Cassidy, R-La. — would prohibit an insurer or pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, from restricting a pharmacy's ability to provide drug price information to people when there is a difference between the cost of the medicine under their insurance plan and without it. The bill would apply to insurance plans offered by employers and those under the Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., joined the other five senators in introducing the Know the Lowest Price Act, which would provide the same protections for individuals covered by Medicare's Advantage and Part D programs.
The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, a lobbying group that represents PBMs, insisted the legislation was rooted in nothing more than anecdotal information, which it said had already been addressed in the marketplace.
"We would oppose contracting that prohibits drugstores from sharing with patients the cash price they charge for each drug," the group said in a March 15 statement.
Earlier this month, the heads of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, and the Food and Drug Administration scolded insurers and PBMs for lacking transparency in their pricing practices.
Capitol Hill loses a 'force of nature'
With the unexpected death of Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., Capitol Hill not only lost one of the longest serving women in Congress, but a "force of nature," said her chief of staff Liam Fitzsimmons.
At 88, Slaughter, who died at a Washington hospital on March 16, was the oldest member of Congress and the first woman ever to chair the House Rules Committee — taking the panel's helm in January 2007, after it had been run solely by men for nearly 218 years.
The committee dictates how a piece of legislation gets to the floor, how many amendments will be considered and how much time will be allowed for debate.
Slaughter, a native of Kentucky, lost the Rules gavel in January 2011 and became the committee's ranking member when Republicans took control of the House.
The New York lawmaker was also a scientist — the only microbiologist on Capitol Hill — and authored the landmark Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, which protects Americans from discrimination based on their genetic information in insurance and employment.
"Now, no American has to fear their DNA will be used against them in healthcare or the workplace," National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said in a tweet, calling Slaughter a "dear friend."
The congresswoman was also the co-author of the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993, which mandated that women and minorities be included in federal clinical research. The law led to the creation of the agency's Office of Research on Women's Health.
In addition, Slaughter authored the House version of the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK, Act, which bars members of Congress and their staff from engaging in insider trading.
It was the STOCK Act that nearly ensnared Trump's first HHS secretary, Tom Price, though he managed to garner enough votes to win confirmation. He quit the job, however, after only seven months under a scandal involving his taxpayer-funded flights on chartered and government jets.
Slaughter had fought for nearly a decade to get a bill passed aimed at saving eight critical classes of antibiotics from being routinely fed to healthy animals, reserving them only for sick humans and sick animals.
But the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act was one of the congresswoman's unfinished bits of legislative business, Fitzsimmons stated.
