Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, appointed Friday as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist who saw patients for 30 years in private practice.
Unlike any OB/GYN I know, Fitzgerald treated men as well as women. That’s because besides being board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology, she is a fellow in “anti-aging medicine.” […]
“Not only is evidence lacking to support superiority claims of compounded bioidentical hormones over conventional menopausal hormone therapy, but these claims also pose the additional risks of variable purity and potency and lack efficacy and safety data,” according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the professional organization for OB/GYNs such as Fitzgerald.
I asked a couple of women’s health advocates what they thought about having an anti-aging medicine doctor lead the CDC. […]
Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., noted that some skeptics have questioned Fitzgerald’s qualifications to head the CDC because she doesn’t have a background in scientific research.
“Her pitch as a physician suggests that, in addition to not being a researcher, she was providing treatments to patients that were not based on credible science,” Zuckerman told me after looking at the archived website for Fitzgerald’s former medical practice. “If a patient wants to try such treatments, and a doctor wants to prescribe them—preferably giving informed consent that the benefits are unproven—that’s up to them.
“But putting that doctor in charge of the CDC, a crucial public health agency, doesn’t make sense.”
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