Under George W. Bush, Robert Redfield helped to shape government policy on HIV by promoting a long-discredited theory that abstinence-only education was the best way to combat the spread of the disease.
The Trump administration has namedvirologist Robert Redfield to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—yet another in a long line of inexperienced, dangerous picks. And, worse still, the position doesn’t require confirmation by the U.S. Senate, so there’s no opportunity for a public discussion.
The previous head of the CDC, Brenda Fitzgerald, was found to have invested in tobacco stocks, an odd choice for someone who is supposed to be dedicated to anti-smoking efforts. And at first glance, Redfield doesn’t seem so bad. He’s a virologist and a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He’s done AIDS research for several decades now and heads up programs providing HIV care. But dig a little deeper into his past, and things get very bad, very fast.
Though he has very minimal experience in the administration of public health policy, this isn’t the first time Redfield has helped shape the government’s stance on HIV and AIDS. Under George W. Bush, Redfield was named to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA). Back then, he was promoting a long-discredited theory that abstinence-only education was the best way to combat the spread of the disease.
In 1996, an abstinence-only advocate testifying before a congressional subcommittee discussing abstinence-only sex education referred to Redfield as a proponent of the view that the breakdown in the American family—that tired conservative shibboleth—was the root cause of increased HIV infections. Why? Because in 1988 he thought—and, for all we know, still thinks—that single-parent households lead to more opportunities for multiple sexual partners. He was also connected to a group called Americans for Sound AIDS/HIV Policy (now the Children’s’ AIDS Fund), which was founded by evangelical Christians. Indeed, his relationship with them was so cozy that the Army found he had inappropriately shared with the group scientific data that he obtained while working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
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