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The number one priority of a government is to keep its citizens safe. On many fronts, the Trump administration is failing. The Trump administration has taken deliberate steps — cutting staffing and funding for federal agencies, gutting research programs, and appointing political loyalists and ideologues rather than experts to head agencies — that have unnecessarily put Americans’ safety, and in some cases their lives, at risk.
Lettuce sold across the nation is making people sick. Cases of measles, declared eliminated in 2000 (thanks to vaccines, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes), are on the rise as vaccination rates decline. Screwworm, a parasite that infects livestock, was detected in the U.S. earlier this year after decades without cases. This comes after high-profile firings at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Water-borne flesh eating bacteria have killed five people in Louisiana and two in Florida. The Trump administration began removing ocean monitoring equipment that could help detect the bacteria. It has since reversed that plan, because of congressional opposition.
Now, the president is urging parents to delay some vital childhood vaccines, even suggesting that parents wait for inoculations that don’t even exist yet. An executive order President Donald Trump signed on Monday says that parents should get their children separate vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella. Not such vaccines exist and it could take years to develop them. The current vaccination, called MMR, includes inoculations against all three illnesses.
The existing childhood vaccination schedule is based on voluminous research on the most effective timing and dosage of the inoculations. If more appointments — which means more time and costs for parents — are needed to get children fully vaccinated, fewer children will be vaccinated, putting them at risk.
Decades of research shows us that vaccines are safe and effective. They have helped eradicate once rampant diseases and have greatly lessened the impacts of others. Vaccines do not cause autism and serious side effects are rare.
Replacing science-based recommendations with a presidential executive order — which thankfully does not have the force of law — based on disproven ideology is a dangerous abuse of authority.
Physicians groups and states, including Maine, have reiterated that the current guidance and schedule for childhood vaccines remains the best way to protect our children from dangerous and potentially deadly diseases.
“Vaccines are our most effective defense against vaccine-preventable illnesses,” Dr. Puthiery Va, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a press release on Tuesday. “In Maine, vaccines remain available at no cost to eligible children through the Maine CDC’s Immunization Program. Maine’s school and child care immunization requirements remain unchanged by federal actions to date.”
Meanwhile, the cyclospora outbreak has now spread to Maine. There are 27 cases in Maine, 10 of them linked to iceberg lettuce that is part of a nationwide outbreak, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nationwide, cyclospora cases have been reported in 47 states, although not all have been tied to iceberg lettuce. There have been 25,000 cases nationwide this year, including two deaths in Michigan. That far surpasses the country’s worst outbreak, which was in 2019 when there were 4,700 cases, the Associated Press reported.
On July 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration linked the outbreak to iceberg lettuce distributed by Taylor Farms in more than two dozen states. The lettuce has been recalled. Taylor Farms distributes lettuce to several major food chains, including Taco Bell, where the outbreak was first reported, and sells its lettuce and salads under many store brands.
While tracing the source of outbreaks is notoriously difficult, some food safety experts and lawmakers have criticized both Taylor Farms and the FDA for its handling of the widespread illness. Sparse and confusing information, from the company and the FDA, has added to public concern about food safety.
Questions have been raised about whether the company’s donations to President Donald Trump’s campaigns and to other Republican campaigns influenced the administration’s handling of the outbreak. Taylor Farm officials met privately with White House officials before the contamination was announced in July, according to Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.
While every risk cannot be avoided or predicted, many of these health dangers could have been avoided with competent leadership that values expertise.
