A Mural of Anthony Fauci Was Meant to Inspire Staff. Then NIH Took It Down. + More
The Defender’s Government NewsWatch delivers the latest headlines related to news and new developments coming out of federal agencies, including HHS, CDC, FDA, USDA, FCC and others. The views expressed in the below excerpts from other news sources do not necessarily reflect the views of The Defender. Our goal is to provide readers with breaking news that affects human health and the environment.
MARCH 17, 2025
A Mural of Anthony Fauci Was Meant to Inspire Staff. Then NIH Took It Down.
The mural of Anthony S. Fauci hung in the halls of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), greeting passersby with an inspirational quote from the retired federal official.
“Science is telling us that we can do phenomenal things if we put our minds and our resources to it,” read the message from Fauci, who ended his five-decade career at the agency in December 2022.
Now there is no image of Fauci, no inspirational message — just a discolored, empty patch of wall. The portrait and quote, which welcomed NIH leaders and staff in one of the campus’s central buildings, was cut out of the mural in the first weeks of the Trump administration, said three current NIH staffers, who provided photos to The Washington Post.
Ron DeSantis Wants POTUS to Appoint Joseph Ladapo as Head of CDC
Florida’s Governor is recommending his Surgeon General for yet another job in the Donald Trump administration. Ron DeSantis believes Dr. Joseph Ladapo would be a “fantastic selection” to helm the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The recommendation is timely, as former Congressman Dave Weldon did not move forward in the process due to insufficient support from Senate Republicans.
If this feels familiar, it’s because DeSantis has done this before. He pushed for Ladapo’s nomination for the head of the Department of Health and Human Services before Robert Kennedy Jr. was nominated.
In turn, Ladapo campaigned for DeSantis during the last presidential race, and strongly suggested he wants First Lady Casey DeSantis to be Governor more recently.
Ladapo, who is the second Surgeon General under the DeSantis administration and is also a Professor of Medicine at the University of Florida, has been vocal about vaccines and their side effects, among other issues, since he took over for Scott Rivkees during the pandemic.
The NIH Knows Experiments on Animals Don’t Work — but Keeps Wasting Billions on Them Anyway
Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported:
A bombshell media report recently exposed an official-unofficial policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under former director Francis Collins: Top officials conducted public business in private, including by using personal e-mail accounts, to skirt public records law and to keep their scheming hidden from the people who pay their salaries. That’s you, taxpayers.
PETA was on to them from the beginning. We requested records and pieced together the scheme, in which Collins’ officials discussed, off the books, the uselessness and grievous cruelty of experiments on baby monkeys. But rather than admit these experiments were wrong, Collins’ cabal let them continue.
It would be easy to write off this episode as an aberration, a symptom of a rogue director. But it’s not. NIH has a systemic problem that continues today.
GOP Cuts Could End CDC Research on Gun Violence, Opioid Abuse, Suicide
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported:
When the Senate on Mar. 15 passed a continuing resolution to avoid a federal shutdown, it also appeared to give the Trump administration the authority to spend funds in a broader manner than in previous budgets.
Experts told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that this could result in funding cuts for certain divisions of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
They said funding for the CDC’s Injury Center — which aims to prevent gun violence, opioid abuse, violence against women and children, suicides and drownings — could be withheld, or impounded, by the Trump administration. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga., 6th District) said the CDC Injury Center plays a vital role in preventing gun violence and saving American lives.
WHO Issues Starkest Warning yet on Fallout From U.S. Withdrawal of Aid for Global Health
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday issued its starkest warning yet on the consequences of the abrupt cessation of U.S. global health funding, saying it is threatening to reverse years of progress in the fight against diseases like HIV, tuberculosis and measles.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on the Trump administration to reconsider its withdrawal of funding for international aid programs. Barring that possibility, Tedros said the U.S. has a responsibility to manage the pullback in ways that do not endanger the lives of people who rely on the programs it funds.
“The U.S. administration has been extremely generous over many years. And of course it’s within its rights to decide what it supports and to what extent,” Tedros said during a news conference in Geneva. “But the U.S. also has a responsibility to ensure that if it withdraws direct funding for countries, it’s done in an orderly and humane way that allows them to find alternative sources of funding.”
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