The New CDC Leader’s Whooping Cough Scandal

Already this year, anti-vaccine activists have downplayed the risks of measles and polio. Now, they’re adding whooping cough to the list, even as cases of the disease surge, killing at least ten babies over the past two years. Two of those babies died in Louisiana, where a crusading state surgeon general, Dr. Ralph Abraham, waited months to warn the public about the outbreak and banned mass vaccination campaigns.

Given Abraham’s vaccine skepticism, it is unsurprising that he has earned a leadership position under RFK Jr.

Instead of discipline, Abraham has been rewarded: Last month, he was appointed to the second-highest leadership role at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Abraham will now be the highest-ranking scientist at the agency. His background is unusual for the role. He practiced veterinary medicine at first, and only later was a family physician. Abraham also served as a representative for Louisiana in Congress from 2015 to 2021. (During the pandemic, Abraham promoted the anti-parasite drug ivermectin as a Covid cure, despite evidence showing it didn’t work.)

Whooping cough, also called pertussis, is caused by bacteria that produce toxins that damage the respiratory lining, resulting in prolonged bouts of coughing. Such episodes are especially dangerous for infants, in whom they can lead to life-threatening respiratory distress. Pertussis has been on the rise since the pandemic—according to the CDC, last year, there were more than 35,000 cases, compared to fewer than 8,000 the year before.

One factor that may be contributing to the soaring pertussis case counts is declining rates of vaccination: Last year, the CDC reported that just over 92 percent of US kindergarteners were vaccinated against the disease, down from 95 percent in 2017. The dip occurred against a backdrop of increasing anti-vaccine activism, embraced by the US Department of Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In Kentucky, three babies have died this year of the disease—none of them were vaccinated, nor were their mothers, according to Kentucky’s Center for Health and Family Services.

Since 2024, the pertussis surge has been especially acute in Abraham’s home state of Louisiana. But this didn’t prompt swift movement from him or other officials. Despite high case counts, it wasn’t until May of this year, by which time two babies in the state had died of the disease, that Louisiana finally issued a health alert. Physicians criticized Abraham for failing to warn residents of the disease’s dangers—and the critical importance of maternal vaccination during pregnancy, since babies can’t be vaccinated until they are two months old.

Abraham has a history of anti-vaccine rhetoric. In February, Louisiana’s Department of Health officially banned vaccine promotion events in the state. That same month, Abraham and his deputy surgeon general, Wyche Coleman, published a letter on the health department’s website decrying what they saw as an overbearing public health system. “For the past couple of decades, public health agencies at the state and federal level have viewed it as a primary role to push pharmaceutical products, particularly vaccines,” they wrote. “Government should admit the limitations of its role in people’s lives and pull back its tentacles from the practice of medicine.” (The Louisiana Department of Health didn’t respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.)

“They are minimizing the seriousness of whooping cough and also spreading false information about the effectiveness of the vaccines.”

Given Abraham’s vaccine skepticism, it is perhaps unsurprising that he has earned a leadership position under Kennedy. In his new role, Abraham will work on high-level agency strategy, as well as coordinate between divisions, and oversee both internal and external communication.

Against the backdrop of the whooping cough surge, anti-vaccine activists have been mounting a campaign against the immunization that protects people from the worst effects of the disease. Last week, Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, devoted an episode of its TV show to whooping cough, inaccurately claiming that the vaccine actually caused more cases. In September, another anti-vaccine group, Physicians for Informed Consent, falsely claimed to its 117,000 followers on X that pertussis vaccines “have big gaps—surveillance, trials, even population data fall short.”

Dr. Fiona Havers, a respiratory disease and vaccine expert who led the pertussis work for the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices before the pandemic, said the anti-vaccine groups’ claims about whooping cough weren’t supported by evidence. While protection from the version of the vaccine that children receive can wane and require a booster, large, high-quality studies consistently show that the vaccines are indeed effective. Likewise, community immunization is critical for protecting babies who are too young to be vaccinated.

The anti-vaccine groups’ claims were “very consistent with the false information that the anti-vaccine movement, including RFK Jr, has been spreading about vaccines for years,” said Havers, who is also an adjunct associate professor at the Emory School of Medicine. “They are minimizing the seriousness of whooping cough and also spreading false information about the effectiveness of the vaccines, which are very effective in preventing disease in children.”

In its TV show episode, Children’s Health Defense suggested that a home remedy of Vitamin C could treat whooping cough. Social media wellness influencers offer similar treatments—one with the Instagram handle of the_detoxmama tells her 811,000 followers that a natural treatment works by “clearing out the barrier and allowing the immune system to get in and deal with the bacteria.”

Pediatric immunologist and social media health communicator Dr. Zachary Rubin said the only proven treatment for whooping cough is antibiotics, which are most effective when given early on in the illness. “Vitamin C does not neutralize the toxin, clear the infection, or shorten the course of illness,” he wrote in an email to Mother Jones. “Relying on vitamin C alone can delay appropriate treatment and increases the risk of complications, especially for babies.”

As of late November, there have been more than 25,000 pertussis cases this year, including three deaths of infants, two in Louisiana and one in Kentucky. Though this year’s total number of cases will likely be lower than last year’s, it will surpass counts in the few years before the pandemic; in 2019, there were fewer than 19,000 cases.

In recent weeks, pertussis has continued its rampage, especially in western states, including Washington, Oregon, and California. The CDC hasn’t yet issued any specific alerts about whooping cough, and the agency did not respond to questions from Mother Jones, except to confirm Abraham’s new role.

Havers sees Abraham’s appointment as part of a pattern of dubious public health leadership decisions—evidenced by his failure to warn Louisiana residents about the dangers of whooping cough. “Obviously, getting information out to the public and to clinicians that professors is circulating in a community is critical for protecting vulnerable infants and for stopping an outbreak,” she said. “It continues to be appalling, the type of people RFK Jr. is putting into high-level positions in CDC.”