Perception

How can you continue to head a major health agency if you trade in stocks of tobacco companies? The answer is you can’t. The director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has left her job for doing just that. The perception of hypocrisy was too great. How can you lead the charge to get people to stop smoking if you are profiting from ownership in companies that promote it? Brenda Fitzgerald, the now former director, was either clueless or brazen. Either position was deadly for her continued presence as director. She is not the only one caught by perception. Her predecessor resigned after it was discovered he was using government jets rather than commercial aviation. One wonders what these people were thinking.