“Attack on Science”: Trump’s Exit from WHO Could Make Next Pandemic More Likely, More Deadly

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Public health advocates across the globe are expressing alarm after President Trump ordered the United States to withdraw from the U.N.’s World Health Organization. The U.S. is the biggest financial backer of the WHO, contributing about 18% of the agency’s budget. Trump’s decision puts numerous programs at risk, including efforts to tackle tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. On Monday evening, Trump signed an executive order declaring the U.S. would leave the global health agency.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So, we paid $500 million to World Health when I was here, and I terminated it. China, with 1.4 billion people, we have 350. We have — nobody knows what we have, because so many people came in illegally. But let’s say we have 325. They had 1.4 billion. They were paying $39 million; we were paying $500 million. It seemed a little unfair to me.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Speaking in Geneva, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jašarević responded to Trump’s decision.

TARIK JAŠAREVIĆ: The World Health Organization regrets the announcement that the United States of America intends to withdraw from the organization. WHO plays a crucial role in protecting the health and security of the world’s people, including Americans, by addressing the root causes of disease, building stronger health systems, and detecting, preventing and responding to health emergencies, including disease outbreaks, and often in dangerous places where others cannot go.

AMY GOODMAN: In addition to pulling out of the World Health Organization, the Trump administration has frozen communications by many federal health agencies, including public health updates, and canceled upcoming meetings as the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.

We go now to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University and director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights. His piece in The Washington Post is headlined “Trump is withdrawing from the WHO. That’s a grave mistake.” Dr. Gostin is also the author of several books, including Global Health Security: A Blueprint for the Future.

Dr. Gostin, welcome back to Democracy Now! A number of issues to discuss here, a full frontal attack on this scientific medical establishment. Let’s start with the organization that Trump is pulling out of, that the U.S. helped to found, the World Health Organization. The significance of this?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Yeah. Thanks very much for having me back.

You know, for me, taking all this together, it really is an attack on science, public health and public health institutions. The Trump administration and President Trump signed a blizzard of executive orders, and many of them were deeply consequential, about energy and also about immigration. But flying under the radar, I thought, was the most momentous decision, really cataclysmic decision, which is to withdraw from the World Health Organization.

We started the World Health Organization in 1948. And for over 75 years, WHO has kept the world and America safer and healthier. And we’ve been its most influential and biggest funder. You know, I couldn’t imagine a world without WHO. And President Trump is really hollowing out that organization. And I believe it’s a grave mistake also for American national interests and our national security.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Gostin, actually, could you elaborate on that? What risk does it present to the U.S. itself? It would obviously be catastrophic for global public health, but what does the U.S. rely on the WHO for?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Well, we rely on the WHO for so many things that we never even realize as a population. First of all, and most immediate, is that WHO has a global response capacity. And so, wherever there’s a hot spot in the world, whether it’s polio in Gaza or Ebola in West Africa or mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo, you name it, the WHO is there early, and they put out fires before they come to America. And remember, we’re not immune. You can’t close the border to a pathogen the way that the president appears to think that he can close it to immigration. Germs don’t know any boundaries.

The other thing I want to mention, as I think it’s even more important, is that WHO has a vast network of laboratories, scientists and public health agencies that report on data. And our pharmaceutical companies, our public health agencies, like CDC and NIH, rely on that data to develop the vaccines and treatments that we need when the next health emergency hits. Americans are used to being at the front of the line when it comes to vaccines and treatments, with Africa and others at the back. We might find ourselves near the back of the line next time, because we’re not going to have access to those vital pieces of information, like pathogen samples or genomic sequencing data or the emergence of mutations and dangerous variants. And so we can’t update our vaccines. We can’t create new vaccines. And it will even affect our seasonal influenza vaccines, because every year we use WHO data to update our influenza vaccines.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Gostin, in the same executive order in which Trump said the U.S. would be pulling out of the World Health Organization, he also called for the U.S. to stop negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement, which some say is even more injurious to global public health than U.S. pulling U.S. funding from the WHO. If you could explain, what is this Pandemic Agreement?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Again, I don’t think it’s as bad as pulling out of the World Health Organization, but it is really bad. So, in the aftermath of COVID, countries around the world called for a new pandemic treaty, because this Pandemic Agreement really would be a treaty, to try to make the world less vulnerable to the next pandemic. This would include, you know, deep, what we call One Health approach — animals, climate and humans, because, you know, some 75% of all novel outbreaks arise in the animal community. It also includes equitable allocation of vaccines and treatments, and also rapid research and development for them, which is really very important. And then it has financing and other provisions for outbreak detection and response.

The United States, for the last several years, has been kind of right at the head of the table. They’ve really — the Biden administration has been very constructive. And they’ve mediated between Africa and equity groups and the European Union. We’ve been the honest broker in the room. And now we’re walking away. And the irony is, is that what we’re doing is we’re allowing the global rules of the road without defending our national interests, our national values, and we cede leadership to our adversaries. I think one of the ironies of this whole thing is that President Trump has said that China has undue influence on WHO. Well, I’ve worked with WHO for nearly 40 years, and the U.S. has far more influence than China ever has, but that could change as we pull out of WHO and the Pandemic Agreement.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Gostin, I wanted to ask you about other moves that President Trump has taken that have alarmed scientists and doctors around the country and the world: the Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of scientific meetings at the NIH and other places, as well as freezing many health agency reports and posts, what public health professionals around the country rely on to assess the health of the American people, including the MMWR, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, of the Centers for Disease Control. Can you talk about the significance of this?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Oh, it’s deeply consequential. I don’t think people understand how consequential it is. Let me start with health communications. Having access to timely and accurate health messages from trusted public health agencies like the CDC and the FDA is really essential to Americans’ public health. Absent that, we can’t make good decisions about our health, our nutrition, whether there’s a food outbreak, say, of Listeria, whether there’s a warning about a novel circulating virus or of a dangerous spike in COVID cases. These are things the American people need to keep them healthy. And this will delay those things, and they will make them less true.

Just ask yourself the question: Who would you trust more to give you information about health than a career scientist at the CDC or the FDA, or a political appointee in the White House that filters scientific information through the lens of politics? It really is outrageous. I’m also a member of several of these scientific committees at NIH, and I can tell you we’re not there conspiring. We’re there trying to figure out hard problems that affect the American population. You know, I know that a lot of President Trump’s administration’s kind of line is that these are, you know, fat bureaucrats. But I can tell you, at NIH, CDC, FDA, these are just — these are doctors, scientists, nurses, that get up every day and do their best to make America healthier and safer. They don’t always get it right, but I would certainly trust their integrity, their experience and their understanding of science to try to guide us through health emergencies and just everyday health problems that American families face.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Lawrence Gostin, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of global health law at Georgetown University, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights. We’ll link to your Washington Post piece, “Trump is withdrawing from the WHO. That’s a grave mistake.” We’ll link to it at democracynow.org. Again, the Trump administration freezing many health agency reports and posts until a political appointee is in place heading the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump’s pick, the vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Coming up, as President Trump defends his sweeping pardons for January 6 insurrectionists, we’ll speak with a young man who fears for his life after Trump pardoned his father. It was the son who tipped off the FBI about his father after the insurrection. Stay with us.