Whose “science”?
World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus took the “unprecedented” measure this weekend of ignoring the agency’s special advisory committee to declare the spread of monkeypox a “public health emergency of international concern” –
despite his lack of medical background and his own admission that the risk of it spreading was “moderate” at worst.
The special advisory committee, which Tedros is not mandated to obey but expected to listen to, concluded last month that the spread of monkeypox globally did not yet rise to the title of global emergency. Its 15 members similarly concluded by majority this week that the situation remained the same – nine panel members opposed using the label PHEIC while six supported it, according to Reuters.
Reuters bizarrely described Tedros overriding the panel to declare a global emergency a “tie-breaker,” despite nine versus six not being a tie. Tedros himself described the situation as such, claiming he “had to act as a tie-breaker” on Saturday — revealing the news wire as a mere stenographer to his spin.
Science magazine observed, citing health experts, that Tedros’ declaration was the first of its kind in the history of the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency.
“This is big, unprecedented decision-making by the director general,” Clare Wenham, a global health expert at the London School of Economics, told Science. The PHEIC system has existed for 17 years
He acknowledged the evidence that the disease appeared to be spreading within a singular community and used it to pressure governments to “work closely with communities of men who have sex with men, to design and deliver effective information and services, and
to adopt measures that protect the health, human rights and dignity of affected communities.”
