“CDC is afraid is afraid to fund firearms research.”
David Hemenway, professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
“Twenty years ago they were doing a tiny amount of funding for firearms research, $2.6 million a year, $2.6 million a year total. This was too much for the gun lobby and Republicans in Congress and they attacked the CDC and now CDC does no funding of firearms research. Zero.”
Hemenway spoke February 17th about gun violence research at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston
“CDC is not expressively prohibited from funding firearms research, but they’re correctly quite fearful because they know they’ll be brought up before Congress and berated and their funding will be cut if they ever fund firearms research. Researchers, staff at the Centers for Disease Control are afraid to say the word guns or firearms at major meetings that I’ve been at for the last 20 years.
“The director of the CDC, of our major public health agency, we’ve had mass shooting after mass shooting in the United States, and what has he said? And I don’t blame him at all, but what has he said about the mass shootings in the United States? He has said not a single word. And for good reason. Because he knows if he says anything about guns, funding will be cut.”
—Steve Mirsky
