[continued from previous message]   
      
   we now know were based on flawed research, or often just guesswork. But   
   according to Hart, the federal health agencies resisted funding studies   
   that might refute CDC recommendations.   
      
   Then there is the matter of institutional conflicts of interest. For   
   example, Hart was dismayed to learn that the same people who sit on NIH   
   grant committees to decide where funding goes also make policy   
   recommendations.   
      
   Such conflicts are a problem. After watching the CDC make so many   
   errors—and always in the same direction—Krohnert co-wrote a paper for   
   the open-access Social Science Research Network, with Dr. Vinay Prasad,   
   the new head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics   
   Evaluation and Research, calling for a firewall between the government   
   entities that gather statistics and those setting policy as a shield   
   against “real or perceived systematic bias.”   
      
   Krohnert also thinks there need to be better conversations about the   
   nature and efficacy of CDC recommendations, which can be overly cautious   
   and reflect a low tolerance for risk, such as its recommendation not to   
   eat raw cookie dough. As a result, the general public often ignores the   
   CDC’s advice.   
      
      
   “Blocking access to data is not going to prevent bad actors from   
   spreading misinformation,” Krohnert said. “If anything, it adds fuel to   
   the fire.” (Kendrick Brinson for The Free Press)   
   Since their recommendations can take on the force of law, official   
   recommendations by the CDC ought to include room for dissent—or at least   
   some wiggle room, depending on the circumstances, Krohnert said. For   
   example, a recommendation to wear masks to prevent the spread of disease   
   might come with a qualification that it might not be appropriate in   
   every situation, so that pediatric speech-therapy clinics and preschools   
   needn’t worry about getting sued for failing to follow the agency’s advice.   
      
   And though they do want sweeping reform, Team Reality don’t want to burn   
   the house down completely. Krohnert said she doesn’t want to render the   
   CDC useless. Just the opposite. She believes that Americans need   
   entities they can trust, though government power usually should be   
   limited to the ability to recommend and not compel.   
      
   “Public-health enforcing isolation of very sick, very contagious people   
   is not particularly controversial,” she said. “But during Covid, we had   
   public-health enforcing quarantine of healthy individuals.   
      
   “We just seemed to skip over all the ethics of that.”   
      
   There is, understandably, some concern that, as the editors of The Free   
   Press wrote yesterday in an editorial about public health, “this   
   administration’s approach to reform often uses a hacksaw when a scalpel   
   is called for.” And yet, the people Trump has selected to lead the NIH,   
   CDC, and FDA are highly credentialed, well-respected, and extremely   
   competent, and they are advocating policies that are as careful as they   
   are radical. “These aren’t Robespierre lieutenants being elevated to   
   judge, jury, and executioner when the revolution was won,” said Hart.   
   “These are the people who should’ve been running things in the first   
   place.”   
      
      
   Readers of The Free Press will be familiar with the names of the doctors   
   just appointed to high positions overseeing the nation’s public   
   health—Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makary, and Vinay Prasad—because they   
   have been writing for The FP since The FP began. You’ll find a   
   compendium of their work here:   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)