Thiel

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is in chaotic disarray, as a slew of resignations and an unprecedented walkout of staff have roiled the agency. At the center of the controversy is the CDC’s weirdo director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose most recent contribution to public health dialogue was a bizarre rant about what passes through his mind as he stares at children. No wonder longtime agency staffers are losing their minds.

Now, in a development that is sure to help (*sarcasm*), Jim O’Neill, Kennedy’s deputy secretary, has been selected to take over at the agency. People are freaking out about O’Neill’s nomination because, well, he’s a freak—or, at the very least, he is anomalous in regards to his espoused beliefs and career experience and how little they seem to match his new job. But, as Stat reports, the sure-fire tell that this man waves a freak flag is his deep connections to PayPal co-founder and all-around weirdo Peter Thiel.

One of the first things you notice when you check out O’Neill’s LinkedIn is just how much time he’s spent working for organizations that were created by rightwing billionaire Peter Thiel. Between 2008 and 2012, O’Neill served as the managing director of Clarium Capital Management, one of Thiel’s first hedge funds. After that, O’Neill spent nearly a decade as the managing director of Mithril Capital Management, one of Thiel’s venture capital firms, which has been responsible for funding companies like Thiel’s defense contractor, Palantir (which is also doing a lot of work for the Trump administration right now).

O’Neill was also previously a board member of Thiel’s Seasteading Institute, an organization that is devoted to the creation of autonomous floating cities that are governed by private entities rather than traditional (i.e., democratic) governments. A picture on the group’s website from 2014 shows O’Neill hanging out with dead-eyed libertarian operative Grover Norquist at Burning Man. The Seasteading Institute is run by Milton Friedman’s grandson, Patri Friedman, who is also a point person for the “Network State” movement, which Thiel is also all wrapped up in.

Frankly, O’Neill’s dense ties to Thiel are one of the less worrying things about him. Much more concerning is the wealth of information about him online that would give any sane person pause when considering whether to let him run a public health agency. For one thing, there’s an old YouTube video of him talking about how we should open up organ donation to the “free market” (there’s nothing wrong with incentivizing people to but and sell organs, right?), and he’s also a fan of Silicon Valley’s trendy new life-extension sciences (he has shared kind words about the penis-shocking, teen-blood-transfusing health guru Bryan Johnson). During the pandemic, he is said to have advocated for the use of alternative medications, like hydroxychloroquine and Joe Rogan’s favorite, ivermectin. The Seasteading Institute is run by Milton Friedman’s grandson, Patri Friedman, who is also a point person for the “Network State” movement. O’Neill also reportedly advocated for dispensing with the FDA’s mandate that drugs be deemed “effective” before they’re sold to the public. In 2014, he told a biotech group: “Let people start using them [the drugs], at their own risk.” And, of course, he wants healthcare to be a “free market” enterprise.

In short, he sounds like a complete and total nightmare and, also, the exact kind of person that RFK would want to run the CDC.

Unlike his boss, O’Neill is not a complete stranger to government, although this should offer little comfort. During the George W. Bush administration, he served in several roles at the HHS, even rising as high as principal associate deputy secretary. In that role, between 2007 and 2008, he is said to have focused his attention on food safety regulations. Then, during Trump’s first term in office, O’Neill was mulled as a potential choice to head the Food and Drug Administration. When it originally broke that Trump was considering O’Neill for this post back in 2016, Gizmodo wrote an article entitled: “Trump is Considering an Insane Silicon Valley Libertarian to Head the FDA.” At the time, much controversy was stirred up by the mere suggestion that O’Neill take the FDA role, and eventually, Trump dropped the idea. Now, unfortunately, O’Neill is going to be running an agency nearly twice as large and significantly more important, at least for the time being. Gizmodo reached out to the government for more information.

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