The Health of the Nation is at Risk

Five out of six former directors for the National Center for Disease Control, with experience spanning 40 years, have "great concern" about the current direction of the agency.

This administration's bungling quotient suggests we should all be greatly concerned.

Here's a quote:

Critics say the agency is changing to a top down management style that stifles science and that new layers of bureaucracy are being created that make agency operations more cumbersome.

The most visible sign of potential trouble at CDC is the loss of more than a dozen high-profile leaders and scientists since 2004. By the end of this year, all but two of the directors of CDC's eight primary scientific centers will have left the Atlanta-based federal agency. The wave of departures -- which numerous CDC leaders call unprecedented -- also includes the agency's top vaccine expert and world experts in several diseases. Just last week CDC's pandemic flu coordinator said he's leaving.

As the nation's 9-1-1 for public health, CDC is responsible for preventing and tackling outbreaks, bioterrorism and pandemics, along with the more routine, deadly threats of seasonal flu, HIV, rabies, injuries and obesity.

The urgency of these missions has current and former CDC scientists deeply concerned the agency's new strategy of looking at health issues broadly and reorganizing its divisions puts it on a course to potential disaster, causing it to lose its footing, like FEMA did before it faced Hurricane Katrina.