To the editor:

Some 45+ years ago I was newly minted Internal Medicine doc, having within the past year joined the practice of Dr. Janners in Hancock. It was a busy Monday morning when I got a call from the ER that one of my elderly patients looked like he had had a stroke. I ran over and after doing an exam, decided it didn’t look like an ordinary stroke. A quick trip to the library made me decide that this looked more like botulism than a stroke. Back in the ER I found out that his wife had similar symptoms and that they had both eaten some home-canned soup the day before. This sealed the diagnosis. The only specific treatment for botulism poisoning is the antitoxin. As botulism is quite rare, the antitoxin is not widely stocked. After a series of calls (taking several hours while I was trying to keep my patients alive) I ended up talking to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), the only source of an adequate supply of the antitoxin; which finally arrived on the midnight flight.

The point of this story is that the CDC is a vital resource for health care for our country. Yet it is under attack. This administration is proposing to cut 2,400 jobs (~20%) at the CDC along with another 3500 at the FDA (responsible for protecting us from dangerous drugs).

A recent editorial column published in The Gazette states that the “CDC is an agency rife for a Trump shake up.” I’m not certain what this means, but recently when I searched the CDC’s website looking for guidelines for manage a problem, I was greeted by the ominous heading “this site is unavailable pending revision.” Turns out the most important revision has been replacing the term gender with the term sex. I can see how this revision will so streamline and focus the CDC that they will accomplish way more with a 20% reduction in force – this is absurd. The proposed across-the-board firings cannot but harm the vital work of the CDC. But at least we’ll know that those few employees who are left will be busy ferreting through all their literature to make sure that no politically incorrect words such as gender remain.

One final thought. If you’re planning on doing any home canning, please be careful – there may be no one left at the CDC who will be able to get you the antitoxin.

Terry Kinzel M.D.