Dr. John H. Powers III, M.D., appointed Acting Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) this month, served as an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) on antimicrobial resistance policy.
Powers now leads the $6.6 billion institute responsible for funding experiments and publications on pandemic pathogens.
Congress has declared that the WHO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic—the greatest health crisis in recent history—“was an abject failure” and that its international efforts “may harm the United States.”
More than half of Americans believe the WHO did a “poor or fair job” during the pandemic, according to an April 2021 Social Science Quarterly publication.
And less than half of Americans believe the WHO acts independently of political agendas.
Critics of global health organizations have raised concerns about placing individuals with ties to unelected foreign bodies like the WHO in senior U.S. government positions that influence domestic policy and taxpayer-funded research.
Hellbound and Down 