Editorial: WTC Health Program must be saved: Firing of leader Dr. John Howard and others must be reversed

New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News on Apr 3, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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The World Trade Center Health Program, providing essential medical care to the heroes and the victims of 9/11, was spared a 20% Trump administration budget cut in February only when Republican members of Congress from New York fought back and saved the WTCHP. Those members must now ride to the rescue again.

GOP Reps. Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Elise Stefanik, Nick Langworthy and Claudia Tenney have to reverse the firing of the head of the WTCHP and all of its doctors by the supremely unqualified Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Of course, all the Democratic House members from New York and Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand will also object to the sacking of WTC Program Administrator Dr. John Howard and his colleagues, but it is the Republicans who will have the sway to get President Donald Trump and Kennedy to revoke the firings.

For years, Howard has been director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which lives within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That was until this week, when Kennedy wiped out NIOSH, firing Howard and all of the doctors at NIOSH, who also served as the expert medical staff of the WTCHP. Gone are the epidemiologists who identified what cancers stemmed from exposure to the toxins at Ground Zero and the physicians who have to certify each person being monitored or treated (currently 90,000) by the WTCHP.

So now there’s a health program for the 9/11 responders and survivors without any doctors and with no one in charge. Way to go RFK Jr.!

Howard was re-appointed to a six year term atop NIOSH by Trump during his first administration and has done double duty (for a single salary) leading the WTCHP since it was established by Congress in 2011 after years of strenuous advocacy by sickened and dying FDNY firefighters and others (including this editorial page).

NIOSH does much more than backstop the WTCHP by establishing nationwide workplace safety rules, such as protecting construction workers from hazards and miners from black lung disease. The Firefighter Fatality and Investigation Program is now completely gone as the WTCHP is being decapitated and stripped of its medical professionals.

In fact everything at NIOSH was eliminated save for the WTCHP, but the swinging ax also loped off the head of the WTCHP, crippling it.

NIOSH was not alone in getting gutted by RFK, the vaccine and science denier quack, who also cut deep into the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, claiming to Make America Healthy Again.

Kennedy must have been under orders from the White House to leave the WTCHP alone (as messing with 9/11 heroes is off limits) but he failed the instructions by offing Dr. Howard and the other doctors.

Trump is loath to admit mistakes. He made one in cutting the WTCHP funding and had to retreat. Now he has to retreat again. He can blame Kennedy if that helps, but the WTCHP has to be restored and Congress has to finally fully and permanently fund it.

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