Michael Silverstein and John Wong, both former chairmen of the United States Preventive Services Task Force, recently argued that Health Secretary and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s decision to remove the panel’s top leaders threatens the integrity of preventive medicine. They warn that a “task force beholden to political interests could roll back evidence-based recommendations.”

With respect to Silverstein and Wong, they are defending an institution that has already failed millions of people — not through political interference, but through institutional paralysis, insularity, and a stubborn refusal to act on overwhelming evidence. For the 37 million people living with kidney disease, the USPSTF’s track record is not one of rigorous independence. It is one of negligence. 

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Silverstein and Wong celebrate the task force’s recommendations on cancer screenings and HIV prevention, claiming these save “tens of thousands of lives per year” and could “help eliminate as many as 90% of new HIV cases among those at highest risk.” Those are worthy achievements. But they make the task force’s silence on kidney disease all the more damning. For over a decade, the USPSTF has refused to recommend routine screening for kidney disease, despite mountains of evidence kidney experts have published linking early detection to better outcomes, despite the disproportionate toll kidney disease exacts on minority and underserved communities, and despite a historic presidential mandate to act. The science has moved. The USPSTF has not.

The consequences of this paralysis are measured in human lives and taxpayer dollars. More than half of those who end up on dialysis first learn of their condition in an emergency room. Innocent people are suddenly blindsided by a diagnosis that, in many cases, could have been caught........

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