A CDC UPDATE

The Tin Can Telephone Invitation To Musical Chairs.

It appears that CDC has finally got the message about removing LGBTQ+ content from its website. As of this morning 31 January 2025, eleven days after President Trump delivered his executive order demanding removal of that material and those responsible for it, a significant amount of LGBTQ+ material is no longer available on CDC.gov. AND notably, Dr. Ethier is no longer the Director of the CDC Division of Adolescent and Student Health (DASH) the focal point of CDC’s effort to recruit America’s children to embrace the LGBTQ+ ideology. However, what does remain are a number of links that either directly or indirectly take the reader to the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, GLSEN website.

Kathleen Ethier, PhD

Unfortunately, Dr. Ethier has been replaced by one of her former Branch Chiefs, Dr. Mike Underwood. Perhaps these changes have come about because in my last request to the media relations folks at CDC for a schedule of compliance with the President’s Executive Order I included a link to this article which calls for the removal of Dr. Ethier.

Dr. Underwood (PhD in pharmacology), is a long time employee of CDC who began his career as an Officer (its what they are called ) in CDC’s prestigious (it is what they call themselves) Epidemic Intelligence Service. After spending a good portion of his years at CDC helping other federal agencies, states, and NGOs develop cancer prevention programs he has ended up as the chief of the Epidemiology and Applied Research Branch in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control (DCPC). But yesterday he became the Acting Director of DASH.

DASH is not unfamiliar terrain for Dr. Underwood who before landing at DCPC was Chief of the School-based Surveillance Branch in DASH where he was responsible for leading the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). As I explained here the YRBS is a questionnaire submitted to high school students that is intended to elicit information on their penchant for engaging in risky behaviors, particularly risky sexual behaviors which Dr. Underwood neatly linked to LGBTQ+ practices with this one question:

64. Which of the following best describes you?

    A. Heterosexual (straight).
    B. Gay or lesbian.

    C. Bisexual.

    D. I describe my sexual identity some other way.
    E. I am not sure about my sexual identity (questioning).

    F. I do not know what this question is asking.

This is what I wrote about the YRBS in that October 2022 article:

Based on this survey CDC concluded that there are 1,994,000 LGBT children between the ages of 13 and 17 in the United States. Of those children 149,000 claim to be transgender. Who knew?

How valid and reliable is this CDC survey? CDC anticipated that question as well and this is what they say about the YRBS’ validity:

”Research indicates data of this nature may be gathered as credibly from adolescents as from adults. Internal reliability checks help identify the small percentage of students who falsify their answers. To obtain truthful answers, students must perceive the survey as important and know procedures have been developed to protect their privacy and allow for anonymous participation.”

Just a couple of points and one question.

First, “Research indicates” without a link to that research is the equivalent of “research says that the moon is made of green cheese”. Second, CDC provides no information on the reliability of those reliability checks. Third, “students must perceive the survey as important”(emphasis added) — which leads to the one question I have for all you:

How many of you are currently or have been the parent of a teenager?

More importantly, it is Dr. Underwood’s YRBS that has been quoted by every major LGBTQ+ advocacy organization in the United States including GLSEN, to explain how “pervasive” and run of the mill LGBQ+ and to gain financial and “moral” support from the Biden administration.

I believed in 2022 as I do today that the results of the YRBS are bogus and that CDC used it in order to show just how mainstream LGBTQ+ culture is within our schools so that they could expand their influence. And now we know who was at the helm, Mike Underwood.

IF Dr. Ethier was removed or resigned because the LGBTQ+ buck stopped with her then there is no doubt that Dr. Underwood should also be replaced because the LGBTQ+ school buck began with him. Dr. Underwood’s detail to DASH is nothing more than CDC internal musical chairs being played by the people who wrote the music.

Dr. Weldon, CDC Director nominee has his hands full.

Union, Kentucky

31 January 2025
T +11