Dr. John H. Powers III, M.D., appointed Acting Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) this month, served as an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) on antimicrobial resistance policy.
Powers now leads the $6.6 billion institute responsible for funding experiments and publications on pandemic pathogens.
Congress has declared that the WHO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic—the greatest health crisis in recent history—“was an abject failure” and that its international efforts “may harm the United States.”
More than half of Americans believe the WHO did a “poor or fair job” during the pandemic, according to an April 2021 Social Science Quarterly publication.
And less than half of Americans believe the WHO acts independently of political agendas.
Critics of global health organizations have raised concerns about placing individuals with ties to unelected foreign bodies like the WHO in senior U.S. government positions that influence domestic policy and taxpayer-funded research.
According to Powers’ official 2014 curriculum vitae submitted to Congress, he held not one but two formal positions with the WHO:
Advisor to the World Health Organization Advisory Group for Integrated Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (AGISAR).
Rapporteur for the WHO working group on ranking of antimicrobial drugs according to their importance for human medicine.
You can contact NIAID here.
No public records indicate he currently holds an active WHO advisory position.
Significantly, the WHO advisory roles are not mentioned anywhere in Powers’ official NIAID biography, raising transparency questions.
The updated biography posted on the NIAID website under “Senior Leadership” and “Office of the Director” as of June 9, 2026, describes Powers’ FDA and NIH career, academic appointments, and service on “numerous national and international advisory committees, including collaborations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and multiple U.S. federal interagency initiatives addressing antimicrobial resistance and global health security.”
But it makes no reference to the World Health Organization, AGISAR, or the specific WHO working group he advised.
In his role as the official Rapporteur for a World Health Organization working group, Powers developed the WHO’s formal ranking of antimicrobial drugs according to their stated importance in human medicine.
He co-authored a 2009 policy paper titled “World Health Organization ranking of antimicrobials according to their importance in human medicine: A critical step for developing risk management strategies for the use of antimicrobials in food production animals,” published in Clinical Infectious Diseases in July 2009.
The document established WHO guidelines intended to restrict or control the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock and food animals worldwide.
Moreover, in his role as an Advisor to the WHO’s Advisory Group on Integrated Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (AGISAR), he participated in the group’s first 2009 meeting in Denmark, which produced the official WHO report titled “Report of the 1st Meeting of the WHO Advisory Group on Integrated Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (AGISAR).”
The report set out international standards for monitoring antimicrobial resistance across humans, animals, and the food chain, along with WHO’s recommended strategies to contain food-related resistance.
These major WHO policy roles—which shaped international antibiotic restriction guidelines with direct implications for global agriculture and human medicine—is conspicuously absent from Powers’ official NIAID biography.
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Gradually the world government plants its agents into national, state, and local governments.
RIP Liberty
How wonderful. Another fox in the hen house!