Rochelle Paula Walensky

Official portrait, 2021

Rochelle Paula Walensky, BA, M.D., M.P.H., (born 4 April 1969) is the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Contents

Early life

Rochelle Paula Bersoff was born in Peabody, MA to Edward Bersoff and Carol Bersoff-Berstein. She was reared in Potomac, MD where she graduated Winston Churchill High School.

Education

• Walensky earned her BA in biochemistry and molecular biology from Washington University in St. Louis in 1991.
• Walensky was awarded her M.D. at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore in 1995. Johns Hopkins University receives very large contributions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is noted for its fervent promotion of male circumcision to prevent HIV infection.
• Walensky obtained her M.P.H. at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston in 2001. The Harvard School of Public Health is known for its pro-circumcision bias.

Adult life

• Walensky served on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School since 2001.
• Chief of the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital from 2017 to 2020.
• Worked to improve HIV screening and care in South Africa.
• Chair of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health from 2014 to 2015.
• Member of the US Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents since 2011.
• Co-director of the Medical Practice Evaluation Center at Massachusetts General Hospital since 2011

Director of the CDC

Walensky was appointed as Director of the CDC by President-elect Joe Biden and assumed office on 20 January 2021. The COVID19 pandemic was raging and had been terribly mishandled so she inherited an agency that was in a real mess. so she has announced plans to completely revamp and reorganize the federal agency.

Publications

Walensky is a very active writer. She is listed as a co-author of 310 articles by the PubMed service of the National Library of Medicine. A scan of the abstracts of the articles did not produce one showing advocacy of male circumcision.

Personal life

Walensky is married to Loren D. Walensky, M.D., Ph.D., who is a pediatric oncologist. They are a Jewish family who are members of Temple Emanuel in Newton, MA. They have three sons who presumably are circumcised in accordance with the Abrahamic covenant and Jewish practice.

Does Walinksy have circumcision bias?

There are three primary sources of bias:

1. Being American.
2. Being Jewish.
3. Personal.

Walensky is both American and Jewish. She is married to a Jewish American man who is most likely circumcised. She has three sons who are most likely circumcised because of being American, Jewish, and having a probably circumcised father who may have adamant father syndrome, so she definitely has two sources of bias and very likely has a third source of bias.

There is a fourth possible source of bias. Walenksky attended Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Johns Hopkins is strongly financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Johns Hopkins is populated by people who have played a major role in promoting non-therapeutic circumcision (VMMC) in Africa. Johns Hopkins may fairly be said to be strongly biased in favor of circumcision.

The CDC has a strong bias in favor of circumcision that dates back at least to 2007, and predates Walensky's tenure of office. It appears that she has been fully occupied with the COVID19 mess at the CDC and has not yet tackled the HIV mess, so there seem to be no actions at this time which would indicate an opinion on HIV.

Walensky did not mention circumcision in one article about HIV.

See also

• Child Circumcision: An Elephant in the Hospital
• Circumcision
• Circumcision and STDs
• Human rights
• United States of America

External links

• Rochelle Walinsky, Wikipedia. Retrieved 11 September 2022.
• Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved 11 September 2022.