Trump’s shutdown of CDC, HHS and NIH is a big mistake. Here’s why

President Trump ’s first week in office included suspending all CDC , HHS , and NIH communications: regulations, announcements, reports, advisories, updates, and online posts.

Frida Ghitis : Without enforcing laws or interpreting regulations, just publishing claims and data can have unrestrained power.

She says the 2016 CDC guidelines for pain treatment with opioids initiated drastic, ongoing reductions in pain care nationwide.

Ghitis says the CDC has no way of determining the actual number of prescription opioid overdose deaths.

A 2018 study in the BJM studied over two million opioid-naïve patients receiving surgery between 2008 and 2016 .

Their subsequent opioid misuse rate was 0.6% . In 2016 , JAMA published data for 641,941 subjects, with no opioid prescriptions for at least a year , receiving major surgery between 2001 and 2013 .