I haven’t read the NYT piece and will operate gladly from your description . . . lots of factors would explain the difference in perspective. I’d guess the NYT guy has favorable prior experience with Dr. Freiden from NYC days. I’d guess the NYT writer likes advocacy oriented Feds as long as the advocacy is in the writer’s direction. Gee whiz, most of the elite press is in the bag for the progressive agenda in health and I think that Dr. Gerberding was too practical and also too good of a public servant for their tastes.

Everyone likes to use government as a hammer when they are the ones holding the hammer. It obviates the need to do any serious thinking about the entire problem. “We know we’re right, now show me the nails.”

Try and get a Fed job for a year. It will change your religion.

Best wishes,

Steve

I served as a science administrator in the CDC after a career as an academic research professor working on behavior change interventions for health and safety. My perspective on people like Gerberding changed enormously after the move from academe to government. Outsiders have no idea how the Federal government operates and tend to employ analysis techniques that rival the fever swamps of Oliver Stone’s imagination writing the next movie screenplay. It’s just assumed that when somebody in the government does something with which you disagree that they must be reckless, stupid, ideological, greedy, or imperious. It’s unimaginable that they are just following laws and regulations or doing what pretty much anyone else would do in the same situation.

Julie Gerberding did an outstanding job especially compared to her predecessor and her successor. She took a marginally functional agency and actually made it work. Imagine if she’d been in charge during the H1N1 crisis. Do you think she’d have promised 120 million doses or hyped the danger? She might have saved Secretary Sebelius from herself. Gerberding did a great job of balancing the exquisite dynamic tension between science, democracy, bureaucracy, politics, health, and business. Folks who would criticize her say more about their own zealotry (often conflated with “science”) than anything she’s done.

Of course, as a former Fed who took the oath, everything I say must be considered suspect, right?

This is an excellent blog and I’ll check in again.

Steve