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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29716 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Could one find a better example of mission creep and infinite expansion of the bureaucracy than the CDC? The early history of the organization has a mission that I think makes sense for a federal entity:

The Communicable Disease Center was founded July 1, 1946, as the successor to the World War II Malaria Control in War Areas program[8] of the Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities.[9]

...

An Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) was established in 1951, originally due to biological warfare concerns arising from the Korean War; EIS evolved into two-year postgraduate training program in epidemiology, and a prototype for Field Epidemiology Training Programs (FETP), which began in 1980.[16] The FETP is a large operation that has trained more than 18,000 disease detectives in over 80 countries. In 2020 FETP celebrated the 40th anniversary of the CDC's support for Thailand's Field Epidemiology Training Program. Thailand was the first FETP site created outside of North America and is found in numerous countries, reflecting CDC's influence in promoting this model internationally.[17] The Training Programs in Epidemiology and Public Health Interventions Network (TEPHINET) has graduated 950 students.[18]

The mission of the CDC expanded beyond its original focus on malaria to include sexually transmitted diseases when the Venereal Disease Division of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) was transferred to the CDC in 1957. Shortly thereafter, Tuberculosis Control was transferred (in 1960) to the CDC from PHS, and then in 1963 the Immunization program was established.[19]

This all seems reasonable enough - the whole point of federal agencies is to handle difficult coordination problems where state-level agencies or even interstate compacts would prove insufficient. Thinking about epidemiology, it makes sense for that to be national. Unfortunately, as these things tend to do, it continued to outgrow the role of handling communicable diseases:

An act of the United States Congress appended the words "and Prevention" to the name effective October 27, 1992. However, Congress directed that the initialism CDC be retained because of its name recognition.[21] Since the 1990s, the CDC focus has broadened to include chronic diseases, disabilities, injury control, workplace hazards, environmental health threats, and terrorism preparedness.

So, as government agencies do, it moved from the original role into providing questionable dietary advice, risk-averse guidance on how to have a safe workplace, and (naturally) some opinions on racism. They kept the title Centers for Disease Control purely for branding purposes, long beyond their purview went well beyond what anyone would consider a "disease".

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