The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters and operations in Atlanta, Georgia have been like a real-life X Files more times than not. So, what do you know about the agency?
In this article, we’ll explore some amazing, amusing or just plain wild facts about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, headquartered right here in my city:
1. It Began As the Communicable Disease Center
The CDC started in 1946 as the “Communicable Disease Center” with one mission: kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the war-surplus army buildings on Clifton Road.
Its first employees were mostly entomologists and engineers, not doctors. The agency’s founder was Dr. Joseph Mountin, a career U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) officer who would eventually become assistant surgeon general…