Florida has seen over 1,300 pertussis circumstances this yr, an 81 p.c enhance from 2024. I didn’t communicate as a retired pediatrician. I spoke as a witness: a witness to programs retreat, a witness to the dismantling of public well being, and a witness to the implications of ignoring coordinated care.
The numbers are staggering. Over 1,500 confirmed measles circumstances in 2025. Three deaths, the primary measles-related fatalities within the U.S. in over a decade. Behind these numbers: kids, households, and communities left weak by a system that when promised safety.
We constructed that system over 125 years by laws, vaccination campaigns, and coordinated care fashions. We thought we eradicated measles in 2000. Not so. This administration introduced the scourge again, costing three harmless lives. We created medical properties for kids with autism, ADHD, and complicated developmental wants. I helped lead that cost, by NIH-funded analysis, navy service, and rural clinic transformation.
And in simply ten months, one man dismantled it.
This isn’t hyperbole. It’s ledgered fact. The Trump administration’s retreat from public well being infrastructure, vaccine messaging, and coordinated care has left a vacuum. Clinics shuttered. Applications defunded. Institutional reminiscence erased. The whirlwind I warned of has arrived.
I’ve seen it firsthand. As medical director of the Nisonger Heart at Ohio State College, as a pediatrician within the U.S. Air Drive, and as founding father of First Coast Developmental Pediatric Consultants, I’ve watched programs constructed with care and foresight collapse beneath the burden of political indifference and ideological rigidity.
However I’ve additionally seen resistance: dad and mom demanding solutions, clinicians refusing to neglect, and editors amplifying testimony. KevinMD has revealed 4 of my editorials. Ten extra are staged for launch. My memoir, The Cassandra Issue, threads this reckoning into narrative: half warning, half legacy, and half name to motion.
This isn’t nearly pertussis or measles. It’s about reminiscence. It’s about civic obligation. It’s about refusing to let public well being be politicized into oblivion.
We want coordinated care. We want vaccine vigilance. We have to bear in mind what labored, and why it mattered.
I could also be retired, however I’m not silent. I’ve ledgered my voice into media testimony, editorial campaigns, and public platforms. I’ve spoken out on CBS and FOX, and most just lately on regional tv on October 16: Motion Information Jax. I’ve staged my legacy throughout KevinMD, Doximity, and ResearchGate. And I’ve honored Kathy’s civic lineage in each clinic, detour, and op-ed.
This isn’t simply resistance. It’s resilience.
This isn’t simply retirement. It’s testimony.
This isn’t only a statistic. It’s a warning.
Ronald L. Lindsay is a retired developmental-behavioral pediatrician whose profession spanned navy service, tutorial management, and public well being reform. His skilled trajectory, detailed on LinkedIn, displays a lifelong dedication to advancing neurodevelopmental science and equitable programs of care.
Dr. Lindsay’s analysis has appeared in main journals, together with The New England Journal of Drugs, The American Journal of Psychiatry, Archives of Common Psychiatry, The Journal of Little one and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, and Scientific Pediatrics. His NIH-funded work with the Analysis Items on Pediatric Psychopharmacology (RUPP) Community helped outline evidence-based approaches to autism and associated developmental issues.
As medical director of the Nisonger Heart at The Ohio State College, he led the Management Schooling in Neurodevelopmental and Associated Disabilities (LEND) Program, coaching future leaders in interdisciplinary care. His Ohio Rural DBP Clinic Initiative earned nationwide recognition for increasing entry in underserved counties, and at Madigan Military Medical Heart, he based Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) CARES, a $10 million autism useful resource heart for navy households.
Dr. Lindsay’s scholarship, profiled on ResearchGate and Doximity, extends throughout seventeen peer-reviewed articles, eleven ebook chapters, and forty-five invited lectures, in addition to contributions to main tutorial publishers akin to Oxford College Press and McGraw-Hill. His memoir-in-progress, The Quiet Architect, threads testimony, resistance, and civic obligation right into a reckoning with programs retreat.
