{"id":459152,"date":"2020-10-23T17:40:14","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T21:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=459152"},"modified":"2020-10-23T17:42:30","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T21:42:30","slug":"cdc-politicization-health-risk-assessment-459152","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/cdc-politicization-health-risk-assessment-459152\/","title":{"rendered":"The politicization of the CDC was under way before Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Traditionally considered impartial and the ultimate source for reliable health information in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has increasingly become mired in political battles.<\/p>\n

When the agency published its guidelines for reopening schools this summer, the executive branch pushed back hard to override them. Squeezed between the coronavirus pandemic on one side and President Trump\u2019s demand for open schools on the other, CDC officials have offered mixed messages, argue University of Rochester<\/a> health policy historian and physician Mical Raz<\/a> and Gil Eyal, a professor of sociology at Columbia University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump administration\u2019s interference may be egregious, but the CDC\u2019s vulnerability to such obtrusion is rooted in something more fundamental,\u201d write Raz and Eyal in a Washington Post<\/em> op-ed<\/a>, published in the newspaper\u2019s \u201cMade by History\u201d section.<\/p>\n

Established originally in 1946, the CDC has guided public health measures since the 1960s by estimating health risks, balancing one against another, and making recommendations to the public on how to minimize those risks. Yet, by its very nature, any risk assessment \u201creflects political and value choices and involves trade-offs,\u201d Eyal and Raz write.<\/p>\n

Risk assessments, the duo argues, ultimately come down to pinpointing what costs\u2014in terms of illness, economics, or other societal harms\u2014are acceptable. They write,\u00a0\u201cNo matter how objective they attempt to be, agencies working in risk assessment are vulnerable to political manipulation because they must make choices about costs and benefits, and such choices are inherently political.\u201d<\/p>\n

While this summer\u2019s political pressure campaign on the public health agency had some extraordinary facets about it, the duo argues that in many ways it was also \u201cvery ordinary\u201d\u2014namely, a dispute about risk assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegulatory science was supposed to depoliticize risk awareness, to present the public and policymakers with an objective, apolitical resolution to such disputes. Yet it became another tool in political struggle,\u201d Raz and Eyal argue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis vulnerability predated the Trump administration, and it will outlast it.\u201d<\/p>\n