Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Originally posted at ConservativeReview.com
The Ebola crisis shined the spotlight on the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The agency is being criticized for mishandling the Ebola crisis but the CDC has been plagued with problems for years and its incompetence has been tied to its expanding mission.
The CDC is an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services that was established in 1946 as the Communicable Disease Center with a mission to prevent malaria from spreading in the U.S.[1]
For decades, the CDC focused it efforts on combating infectious agents, surveillance of infectious disease and research on the detection of these biological agents. The CDC played a key role in successfully addressing serious viral diseases including the eradication of small pox and polio[2],[3],[4].
The agency’s name was changed in 1970 to the Center of Disease Control, in 1981 to the Centers of Disease Control and eventually to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in 1992[5].
The name changes reflects a significant broadening of CDC’s mission from its original core focus on infectious disease. Today, the CDC is involved in trying to reduce disease, injury and illness from almost any source.
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