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by Zachary Stieber
July 18, 2025
from
TheEpochTimes Website
Article also HERE
Health Secretary
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
testifies on Capitol
Hill on May 14, 2025.
Madalina Vasiliu/The
Epoch Times
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
and
Secretary of State Marco Rubio
announced
the move...
The
Trump administration said on July 18 that the United States is
rejecting a World Health Organization (WHO) agreement that it
says gives the global health body too much power.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of State
Marco Rubio announced the formal rejection of the 2024
amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR).
"Nations who accept the new regulations are
signing over their power in health emergencies to an unelected
international organization that could order lockdowns, travel
restrictions, or any other measures that it sees fit," Kennedy
said in a video statement.
"In fact, it doesn't even need to declare an
emergency."
Video also
HERE...
The amendments to the regulations included
introducing a new term - a 'pandemic' emergency - that would trigger
certain actions to respond to a 'pandemic' or events that could become
a 'pandemic'.
The WHO
said after they were approved in
2024 by member countries - including the United States - that the
amendments would,
"strengthen global preparedness, surveillance
and responses to public health emergencies, including
pandemics."
According to U.S. officials, there was a deadline
this month to reject the amendments, or they would have become
binding on the United States, even though the country
withdrew from the WHO earlier this
year at President Donald Trump's direction.
Rubio and Kennedy
said in a joint statement that the
amendments compel countries to adopt digital health documents and
elevate political issues such as solidarity, rather than take quick
and effective action.
"Our Agencies have been and will continue to
be clear: we will put Americans first in all our actions, and we
will not tolerate international policies that infringe on
Americans' speech, privacy, or personal liberties," they said.
"These amendments risk unwarranted
interference with our national sovereign right to make health
policy."
WHO director-general
Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus wrote
on X on July 18 that,
'countries have the right to decide whether or
not to adopt the IHR amendments and that the organization
regretted the decision by U.S. officials not to adopt them.'
He also said that the amendments,
"are not about empowering WHO, but about
improving cooperation among Member States in the next 'pandemic'."
Some members of Congress praised the development.
"The United States will not allow the WHO to
use public health emergencies to devastate our nation.
I fully support the Trump administration's
decision to reject the IHR amendments," Sen. Ron Johnson
(R-Wis.)
said in a statement.
"The United States must never cede our sovereignty to any
international entity or organization.
I applaud Secretary Kennedy and Secretary
Rubio for rejecting the World Health Organization's ill-advised
International Health Regulations amendments," Rep. Chip Roy
(R-Texas)
said.
Lawrence Gostin, of the WHO
Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law,
wrote on
X that the set of regulations,
"facilitates rapid detection and response...
promotes accurate info and protects civil liberties, and it
certainly does not affect US sovereignty."
The IHR was introduced in 2005 as the successor
to international sanitary regulations that had been in place since
1951.
When the WHO approved the amendments in 2024, members also agreed to
keep negotiating a 'pandemic' agreement.
Members in May
approved a 'pandemic' agreement that
states in part that,
countries shall take steps to prepare for future
pandemics, including improving
vaccine coverage...
The United States did not participate in the final stages of
negotiations for the accord because they were held after the country
withdrew from the WHO.
Trump's executive order directing,
"will have no binding force on the
United States."
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