MISSION IMPOSSIBLE –
June 5, 2025 – Overdose deaths have decreased every single month. That very same day, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in testimony before Congress, made no reference to overdoses, the number one killer of Americans 18 to 44 years of age. A week later, in his agency’s 72-page “Making America Healthy Again” manifesto, the word “opioid” was never mentioned. Instead, he went on to propose that CDC should be disassembled, along with the other principal agencies responsible for addressing the overdose crisis. Those proposals, as part of the administration’s 2026 fiscal year budget, passed the House and await action by the Senate.
For nearly thirty years I was a CDC scientist. I have been outspokenly critical of how CDC and those other agencies have handled the opioid crisis, but the solution is not to take a wrecking ball to the institutions that protect us, particularly when we seem to be making progress. What will be the consequences? A health secretary who systematically ignores mention of the major killer of adult Americans is clearly not interested in research on what could account for a decrease in deaths.
