WHO’s Out First? – OpEd

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 23:46:11 +0000
World

Last month, the United States and Argentina formally withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO). The joint move follows President Trump’s declaration to withdraw in January, followed by Argentina in February.

According to the president, U.S. withdrawal is “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China,” its failure to adopt “urgently needed reforms,” and show independence from “the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.” In addition, “the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.” China, with a population of 1.4 billion, “has 300 percent of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.”

For HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Argentine Health Minister Mario Lugones, “The WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed serious structural and operational shortcomings that undermined global trust and highlighted the urgent need for independent, science-based leadership in global health.” The pair cited “well-documented concerns regarding the early management of the pandemic and the risks associated with certain types of research,” a refence to the gain-of-function research, that makes viruses more lethal and transmissible.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese laboratory off limits to U.S. oversight and accountability. In early 2020, Dr. Fauci proclaimed, “I join my fellow representatives in thanking the World Health Organization for its role in leading the global response to this pandemic.” WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus took it to another level.

“The Chinese government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken to contain the outbreak,” proclaimed the WHO director in February 2020. Irish epidemiologist Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at the WHO, praised China’s “consistent message” and echoed China’s claim that the COVID virus was “natural in origin.” Those who saw evidence of a lab origin were branded as conspiracy theorists and excluded from the debate. CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield, an experienced virologist, even got death threats.

The WHO was slow to accept new evidence and own up to past mistakes. “Rather than ensuring timely transparency,” the U.S.-Argentina statement explains, “the WHO failed to provide critical access to information, impairing countries’ ability to act swiftly and effectively, with devastating global consequences.”

In April of 2024, the WHO promoted Ryan to deputy director, but last month, the WHO dropped Ryan from its executive management team. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who remains director, earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1986 but is not a medical doctor. While serving as Ethiopia’s health minister from 2005-2012, Tedros was accused of covering up three separate cholera outbreaks. In 2017, Tedros became the first non-doctor to head the WHO.

“Tedros is really an outstanding person,” said Dr. Fauci in March 2020, and under his leadership, the WHO “has done very well.” The USA and Argentina don’t think so and have now left the WHO. That could set the stage for withdrawal from the United Nations. Consider a few U.N. realities people may have forgotten or never known.

**After WHO, Is the U.N. Next?**

In 1945, Soviet diplomat Andrei Gromyko suggested that U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss should be the first U.N. Secretary General. As the late Angelo Codevilla noted in Informing Statecraft, Hiss was a Stalinist spy and Soviet agent of influence.

At the opening conference of the U.N. in San Francisco, the speech of U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius was written by Stalinist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who joined the Communist Party during the Nazi-Soviet Pact. See Dalton Trumbo by Bruce Cook and this writer’s Hollywood Party. For more U.N. insight, dial it back 50 years from today.

In 1975, the Communist Khmer Rouge was marching Cambodians into the countryside and conducting mass executions. The United Nations did not consider the possibility of human rights violations until long after the Communists had exterminated approximately one-fourth of Cambodia’s population. The U.N. Secretary General at the time was Kurt Waldheim, who as a Nazi soldier participated in atrocities against civilians during WWII.

As the joke had it, the former U.N. boss was afflicted with “Waldheimer’s Disease,” which made him forget he was a Nazi. The revelations surfaced when Waldheim ran for president of Austria in 1986, and the United States banned him from entering the country.

The United States still hosts the U.N. and has been its major funder since 1945. In the style of the WHO, the U.N. gets a lot of money from American taxpayers but is not very good at its appointed tasks. So let the debate begin.

· This article was also published in The American Spectator