Medical, legal, and political experts are sounding alarms amid the Trump administration’s attempt to fire the newly confirmed Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which triggered a mass exodus of top CDC officials resigning in protest, including one with a damning public resignation letter that went viral.
“The White House said late Wednesday that it had fired Susan Monarez, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after a tense confrontation in which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to remove her from her position,” The New York Times reported. “A lawyer for Dr. Monarez said in response that she was refusing to step down.”
Attorneys for Dr. Monarez, a microbiologist and public health official, said that only the President can fire her.
But in response to her attempted ouster, four top CDC officials resigned:
Dr. Debra Houry, Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science
Dr. Daniel Jernigan, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases
Dr. Jennifer Layden, Director of the Office of Public Health Data, Science, and Technology
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
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In his scathing letter of resignation, Dr. Daskalakis wrote in part that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s views “challenge my ability to continue in my current role at the agency and in the service of the health of the American people. Enough is enough.”
“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.”
He pointed to this week’s changes to the adult and children’s immunization schedule that “threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people.”
In a much-circulated excerpt, Dr. Daskalakis wrote that the “data analyses that supported” the decision to change the immunization schedule “have never been shared with CDC despite my respectful requests to HHS and other leadership. This lack of meaningful engagement was further compounded by a ‘frequently asked questions’ document written to support the Secretary’s directive that was circulated by HHS without input from CDC subject matter experts and that cited studies that did not support the conclusions that were attributed to these authors.”
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He added: “Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.”
Dr. Daskalakis warned that “Their desire to please a political base will result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults. Their base should be the people they serve not a political voting bloc.”
EXPERTS RESPOND
“There is a [wholesale] destruction of leadership at the CDC,” warned Dr. Ashish K. Jha, a top medical scholar who served as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator in the Biden administration. “The newly confirmed Director is out. Most of the top leaders who run key centers have resigned en masse. Total implosion. All because of @SecKennedy leadership.”
“What a complete disaster,” he added.
Lawrence Gostin is a professor of medicine and public health, and a co-faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.
“Monarez by law can only be fired by the president who has been silent. RFK fired her & she refuses to go. The sheer chaos is notable in addition to the lawlessness & thinly veiled attack on science & the CDC. Once the shining crown of federal agencies, CDC is now gutted,” Professor Gostin wrote. He added that Monarez’s firing “shows clearly that science is now a matter of political orthodoxy and blind political loyalty, rather than evidence-based. Make no mistake. Monarez lost her job because she wouldn’t fall in line with RFK’s anti-vaccine agenda.”
U.S. Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA), a medical doctor, called Daskalakis’ letter “chilling,” and warned, “RFK Jr. is driving out dedicated public health experts because they refuse to rubber-stamp his dangerous views on vaccines.”
“Their resignations make clear that they are no longer being allowed to do their jobs to protect the health and safety of the American people.”
MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell, a former congressional staffer, called Daskalakis’s statement “nothing less than the most important federal government resignation letter in history.”
U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a top Democrat on the Health Committee, called for Secretary Kennedy’s termination: “We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of the CDC and our other critical health agencies to the ground—he must be fired.”
Dr. Craig Spencer, a globally recognized public health expert, emergency medicine physician, and Associate Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy, and Practice, wrote:
“What’s happening at the CDC should frighten every American. Regardless of whether you are MAGA, MAHA, neither, or don’t give a damn about labels or politics. It’s unclear whether the CDC director—confirmed just weeks ago—has been fired or not. Absolute s–. And incredible career professionals resigned tonight, sounding a massive alarm. This is pure chaos that leaves the country unprepared.”
“Imagine cases of Ebola in the U.S. right now?” added Dr. Spencer, who once contracted the disease. “We would be an absolute mess. It’s easy to tune this all out, to celebrate what you might see as ‘cleaning house’, or just not care what’s happening. But I promise you, when confronted with the next serious health threat, we will quickly see everything we’ve lost. We will regret this. I promise, we will regret this.”
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