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    Former CDC official ‘only sees harm’ to public health under RFK Jr’s leadership

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    The former immunizations director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned of the future of American health under the leadership of Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.In an interview on Sunday with ABC, Demetre Daskalakis – who resigned this week in protest over the White House’s firing of CDC director Susan Monarez – said: “From my vantage point as a doctor who’s taken the Hippocratic Oath, I only see harm coming.”He went on to add: “I may be wrong, but based on what I’m seeing, based on what I’ve heard with the new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, or ACIP, they’re really moving in an ideological direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination.”Daskalakis’s interview comes amid growing chaos across US health agencies and rare bipartisan pushback towards the White House’s firing of Monarez, which came amid steep budget cuts to the CDC’s work as well as growing concerns of political interference.There have also been growing public calls for Kennedy to resign, particularly as he has continued to make questionable medical and health claims – and be lambasted in response by experts and lawmakers alike.Explaining his resignation, Daskalakis said: “I didn’t think that we were going to be able to present science in a way free of ideology, that the firewall between science and ideology has completely broken down. And not having a scientific leader at CDC meant that we wouldn’t be able to have the necessary diplomacy and connection with HHS to be able to really execute on good public health.”Daskalakis also criticized Kennedy’s recent changes to the childhood Covid-19 vaccine schedule, noting that the vaccine is currently approved only for people aged 65 and older, as well as for children and adults with underlying health conditions.“That’s not what the data shows. Six months old to two years old, their underlying condition is youth. 53% of those children hospitalized last season had no underlying conditions. The data say that in that age range, you should be vaccinating your child. I understand that not everybody does it, but they have limited access by narrowing that recommendation. Insurance may not cover it,” Daskalakis said.He also cast doubt on Jim O’Neill, the new CDC chief who was a top aide to Kennedy and has no training in medicine or infectious disease science.In response to whether or not he trusts O’Neill saying that he is in favor of vaccines, Daskalakis said: “Honestly, I really want to trust it … But based on the very first post that I’ve seen from him on X where he says that CDC scientists manipulated data to be able to follow an ideology or an agenda in the childhood schedule, makes me think that I know what leader he serves, and that leader is one that does not believe in vaccination.”In a Saturday op-ed for the New York Times, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders accused Kennedy of “endangering the health of the American people now and into the future”, adding: “He must resign.”Since he assumed leadership over the health department, Kennedy – a longtime anti-vaccine advocate – has fired health agency workers and entertained conspiracy theories. Last week, more than 750 current and former employees at US health agencies signed a letter in which they criticized Kennedy as an “existential threat to public health”.The health agency workers went on to accuse the health secretary of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information”.The letter comes after a deadly shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta earlier this month, when a 30-year-old gunman fired more than 180 rounds into the buildings, killing a police officer before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The shooter had been struggling with mental health issues and was influenced by misinformation that led him to believe the Covid-19 vaccine was making him sick, according to the gunman’s father. More

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      RFK Jr says he’ll ‘fix’ a vaccine program – by canceling compensation for people with vaccine injuries

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      While unrest and new vaccine restrictions have kept US health agencies in headlines, there’s one vaccine program in particular that Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recently vowed to “fix”, which experts say could further upend the vaccine industry and prevent people experiencing rare side effects from vaccines from getting financial help.While some changes to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which compensates people who suffer very rare side effects from vaccination, must come from Congress, Kennedy could take several actions to reshape or affect the program’s operations.Kennedy “seems to be pursuing two opposite theories” on changing VICP, said Anna Kirkland, a professor at the University of Michigan and author of Vaccine Court.“Make it easier and compensate more, versus blow it all up. And then maybe there’s a third way of, foment skepticism, undercut recommendations,” she said.The moves represent the latest battle in “the war on vaccines that he’s been waging for decades”, Art Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine said. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist for about two decades, has reported more than $2.4m in income for referring vaccine-related cases to a law firm, for instance.Making major changes to the program may open up vaccine makers to more litigation, making it difficult for them to keep existing vaccines on the market or to produce new ones.In 1980, there were 18 companies in the US producing vaccines; a decade later, there were four. Congress passed a law in 1986 leading to the establishment of the VICP to prevent further instability in the vaccine market.By making changes to the program, Kennedy “can scare the manufacturers”, and the market is “pretty fragile”, said Caplan.Dorit Reiss, professor of law at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, said that “VICP was adopted … because manufacturers were leaving the market over litigation” and that “this would mean manufacturers will pull out of the market and we’ll have less vaccine accessible”.There aren’t many vaccine makers left in the US. Most vaccines are not very lucrative – either for the manufacturers or the doctors who administer them. Most routine vaccines are covered under the VICP.Caplan said any vaccines could be vulnerable and these actions have major consequences for uptake even if vaccines remain on the market.“The biggest problem is still undermining trust in mainstream science,” Caplan said.Changing or even eliminating the program would also likely make it more difficult for patients to have their cases addressed. Yet a bill that would abolish the VICP entirely, introduced by the representative Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, is gaining traction in anti-vaccine circles.Reiss noted that “undoing VICP might mean there’s no vaccines available”.A website about Gosar’s bill features a quote from Kennedy: “If we want safe and effective vaccines, we need to end the liability shield.”HHS did not respond to the Guardian’s questions on whether Kennedy knows about this use of his quotation, or what his plan to “fix” the compensation program involves.There are several actions Kennedy can take to “make vaccine availability much more difficult”, Caplan said.Kennedy has mentioned two concrete plans: adding discovery to existing compensation claims, and removing the backlog of claims. The program rules already allow discovery at the discretion of the adjudicators, called special masters. Adding special masters could help speed up claim processing, but the number of special masters was set by Congress, not HHS.In addition, the special masters answer to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), not HHS – though they represent the secretary in claims.“The first thing [Kennedy] said he was doing was working with Pam Bondi at DoJ,” Kirkland said. “Bondi could certainly direct her own employees to stop contesting a lot of things, and just let as much as possible go through, because they represent the secretary against the petitioners. So they could certainly change the softer ways that they operate, try to be easier, try to be faster.”In that case, Kennedy could ask the special masters to concede – effectively approving automatically – any claims about, for instance, diagnoses of autism or allergies after vaccination, Reiss said.One way to argue that a vaccine caused severe side effects under VICP is to present in a causation hearing a preponderance of evidence demonstrating it’s more than 50% likely – a metric known as “50% and a feather” – that the vaccine is the cause of a side effect.But “there doesn’t have to be existing literature that shows this connection. If you have a credible expert with a convincing theory, that’s enough” under VICP, Reiss said.Reiss noted that the “program was intentionally and consciously designed to make it easy to compensate”.“It increases vaccine trust when we have a quick, generous compensation program – when we can tell people: ‘Look, if the worst happens, if you’re the one in the million where things actually go wrong, you can be quickly and generously compensated, whereas if you instead get a vaccine-preventable disease, you don’t have any compensation.’ I think that can help trust. It’s also the right thing to do,” she said.The other way to settle a claim is the table of injuries, which lists the vaccines included in ACIP [the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices], potential injuries and time periods.“If the injury occurs within that time, then causation is presumed,” Reiss said.Kennedy could change the table, adding more or different side effects. This would require publishing public notice and accepting comments. If a new injury is added to the table, cases are allowed to be submitted for the past eight years, rather than the usual three years.The table is “the one that’s the most straightforwardly under his control”, Kirkland said. The last time a government agency tried to change the table, it failed. “That’s got to mean something,” she added.If the ACIP no longer recommends a routine vaccine, it may be removed from the table. Claims would then need to go through the regular court system.There is a higher bar in the regular courts, where claimants have to show fault, demonstrating a defective product or negligence, for instance. The rules of evidence are stricter. Claimants also have to hire a lawyer and pay the lawyer costs and the experts.With the private US healthcare market, “if you don’t win your case, you’re going to then get stuck with gigantic medical bills”, Caplan said.In a country like the US, where the burden is on the individual to pay their medical bills, VICP is a safety net for people having medical events after vaccination, he said.Many of the claims now handled under VICP are for relatively low amounts of money that law firms – especially the rare firms with the expertise to take on large pharmaceutical companies – might not find worthwhile in representing.There are aspects of VICP that need reform, Reiss said. The program needs more special masters, the caps on payments need to be updated from original levels set in the 1980s, and the statute of limitations should be expanded beyond three years – especially because it is difficult to diagnose side effects in young children in that amount of time, she said.“The statute of limitations, special masters and caps need to be changed, and there have been efforts to do that,” she said. “They just, I think, didn’t get enough attention, and that’s probably not what he’s focusing on.” More

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      CDC chief ‘targeted’ for refusing to ‘rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives’, lawyers say – as it happened

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      Susan Monarez was removed from her position as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday without being told why she was fired, her lawyers said in a statement.“First it was independent advisory committees and career experts. Then it was the dismissal of seasoned scientists. Now, Secretary Kennedy and HHS have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk”, her lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement posted on social media.“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted. Dr. Monarez has neither resigned nor received notification from the White House that she has been fired, and as a person of integrity and devoted to science, she will not resign.”“This is not about one official,” the lawyers added. “It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science. The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within.”The Department of Health and Human Services offered no explanation when it announced in an unsigned social media post that Monarez, who was confirmed by the Senate as CDC director and sworn in by Kennedy just last month, was no longer in charge of the public health agency.Sources “who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution”, told the New York Times reports that Monarez had objected to sweeping changes to the panel of experts who advise the agency on vaccine policy made by Donald Trump’s anti-vaccine health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.An administration official also told the Times that Kennedy had summoned Monarez to his office on Monday and demanded that she resign. After she refused to do so, she called Dr Bill Cassidy, the Republican chairman of the Senate health committee. Kennedy then accused Monarez of “being a leaker” and said that she would be fired.Hours before Monarez left the agency, Kennedy hailed decisions by the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday revoking the emergency use authorization for the Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax that CDC experts estimate saved 3.2 million lives in the United States.Vaccines from the three manufacturers are now authorized by the FDA only for people who are 65 and older, or younger people with an underlying medical condition that puts them at risk for severe disease.Even those that qualify for the vaccines will only be able to get them in the US if the advisory panel, reshaped by Kennedy to include Covid vaccine opponents, votes to approve them.This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back at it on Thursday morning. Here are the latest developments:

      The leadership of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was thrown into chaos after the health department announced the Senate-confirmed CDC director, Susan Monarez, was no longer in charge, but her lawyers said she refused to resign and had not been fired.

      First it was independent advisory committees and career experts. Then it was the dismissal of seasoned scientists. Now, Robert F Kennedy Jr and HHS have set their sights on “weaponizing public health for political gain” and “putting millions of American lives at risk”, lawyers for Monarez said in a statement. “When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted. Dr. Monarez has neither resigned nor received notification from the White House that she has been fired, and as a person of integrity and devoted to science, she will not resign.”

      At least three CDC senior officials resigned after Monarez was ousted. One squarely blamed Robert F Kennedy Jr’s leadership.

      “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases told colleagues.

      Public health experts are sounding the alarm about the chaos at the CDC, as at least three senior leaders resigned following the ouster of the apparent ouster of the CDC director.

      As a Senate-confirmed official, only the president has the authority to fire her, and, for once, Donald Trump has been strangely silent as this drams unfolded. But the White House press office issued a statement saying that Monarez had been removed, not by Trump but by “the White House”.
      While differences over vaccines appear to have been central to the rift between the ousted CDC director, Susan Monarez, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, Monarez also stood out from her bosses by mourning for the officer who died defending the agency’s campus in Atlanta from a gunman who was driven by misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine.While Monarez publicly mourned David Rose, who, as our colleague George Chidi wrote, was murdered by a lie, others in the CDC were distressed that Kennedy said little, and Trump nothing about the attack on their campus.The confusion over whether or not Susan Monarez is still the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after the health department said she was not, and her lawyers said she has not resigned or been fired, partly stems from the fact that Monarez was confirmed by the Senate last month.As a Senate-confirmed official, only the president has the authority to fire her, and, for once, Donald Trump has been strangely silent as this drama unfolded on Wednesday night.But the White House press office has just issued a statement saying that Monarez has been removed, not by Trump but by “the White House”.“As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again” the White House deputy press secretary, Kush Desai, said in a statement to the Guardian. “Since Susan Monarez refused to resign despite informing HHS leadership of her intent to do so, the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the CDC.”As Aaron Fritschner, an aide to Don Beyer, a Democratic congressman, observed: “Don’t think ‘the White House’ has the power to terminate the Director of the CDC. The President does, but they didn’t say that he did, which is curious.”Public health experts are sounding the alarm about the chaos at the CDC, as at least three senior leaders resigned following the apparent ouster of the CDC director.“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 shitshow,” Dr Craig Spencer, an emergency medicine doctor and professor at Brown University School of Public Health posted. “And incredible career professionals resigned tonight, sounding a massive alarm,” he added. “This is pure chaos that leaves the country unprepared. Imagine cases of Ebola in the U.S. right now? We would be an absolute mess.”“RFK, Jr is increasingly becoming a liability for the White House,” Dr Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at George Washington University, observed. “I doubt the president feels good about RFK’s incessant attack on his COVID vaccine triumph and he’s likely not going to be pleased that the HHS Sec is usurping the role of the President in hiring/firing senate confirmed officials.”“There is a wholesale destruction of leadership at the CDC. The newly confirmed Director is out,” Dr Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, wrote. “Most of the top leaders who run key centers have resigned en masse. Total implosion. All because of [Secretary Kennedy’s] leadership. What a complete disaster.”Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned on Wednesday from his position as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, just posted his full, blistering resignation letter on Instagram.In the letter, the veteran public health official blames the views and erratic leadership of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, for making it impossible for him to continue.“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. The recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people,” Daskalakis wrote, in reference to the decision in May, for the CDC to remove its recommendation of the Covid-19 vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women.He added that the data to support this change was never shared with the CDC and that a public information sheet on the change, “written to support the Secretary’s directive” was circulated by the health department “without input from CDC subject matter experts”.Daskalakis also called out Kennedy’s fondness for “social media posts announcing major policy changes” without consulting CDC experts in advance. “Having to retrofit analyses and policy actions to match inadequately thought-out announcements in poorly scripted videos or page long X posts should not be how organizations responsible for the health of people should function,” he wrote.“The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer,” he added. “I believe in nutrition and exercise. I believe in making our food supply healthier, and I also believe in using vaccines to prevent death and disability. Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.”“The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning,” Daskalakis wrote, drawing attention to the gunman who fired hundreds of rounds into CDC buildings who was motivated by unfounded theories about injuries from the Covid-19 vaccine that Kennedy has promoted.“My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud. I am resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that HIS and his minions’ words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur. I reject his and his colleagues’ thoughts and prayers, and advise they direct those to people that they have not actively harmed,” Daskalakis wrote.“For decades, I have been a trusted voice for the LGBTQ community when it comes to critical health topics,” the doctor, who formerly led HIV/AIDS prevention at the CDC, and once dressed in drag to administer meningitis vaccines, added. “I must also cite the recklessness of the administration in their efforts to erase transgender populations, cease critical domestic and international HIV programming, and terminate key research to support equity as part of my decision.”Susan Monarez was removed from her position as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday without being told why she was fired, her lawyers said in a statement.“First it was independent advisory committees and career experts. Then it was the dismissal of seasoned scientists. Now, Secretary Kennedy and HHS have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk”, her lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement posted on social media.“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted. Dr. Monarez has neither resigned nor received notification from the White House that she has been fired, and as a person of integrity and devoted to science, she will not resign.”“This is not about one official,” the lawyers added. “It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science. The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within.”The Department of Health and Human Services offered no explanation when it announced in an unsigned social media post that Monarez, who was confirmed by the Senate as CDC director and sworn in by Kennedy just last month, was no longer in charge of the public health agency.Sources “who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution”, told the New York Times reports that Monarez had objected to sweeping changes to the panel of experts who advise the agency on vaccine policy made by Donald Trump’s anti-vaccine health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.An administration official also told the Times that Kennedy had summoned Monarez to his office on Monday and demanded that she resign. After she refused to do so, she called Dr Bill Cassidy, the Republican chairman of the Senate health committee. Kennedy then accused Monarez of “being a leaker” and said that she would be fired.Hours before Monarez left the agency, Kennedy hailed decisions by the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday revoking the emergency use authorization for the Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax that CDC experts estimate saved 3.2 million lives in the United States.Vaccines from the three manufacturers are now authorized by the FDA only for people who are 65 and older, or younger people with an underlying medical condition that puts them at risk for severe disease.Even those that qualify for the vaccines will only be able to get them in the US if the advisory panel, reshaped by Kennedy to include Covid vaccine opponents, votes to approve them.Inside Medicine, a newsletter written by Jeremy Faust, a public health researcher and emergency medicine physician, just published the full text of email statements three CDC leaders who resigned on Wednesday sent to their colleagues to explain their reasons for leaving the US public health agency after its new director abruptly departed.The most explosive charge came from Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who stepped down as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health. You are the best team I have ever worked with, and you continue to shine despite this dark cloud over the agency and our profession,” Daskalakis wrote. “Please take care of yourself and your teams and make the right decisions for yourselves.”“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations,” Dr Deb Houry, the agency’s chief medical officer, wrote. “Vaccines save lives – this is an indisputable, well-established, scientific fact. Informed consent and shared decision-making must focus not only on the risks but also on the true, life-saving benefits that vaccines provide to individuals and communities. It is, of course, important to question, analyze, and review research and surveillance, but this must be done by experts with the right skills and experience, without bias, and considering the full weight of scientific evidence. Recently, the overstating of risks and the rise of misinformation have cost lives, as demonstrated by the highest number of US measles cases in 30 years and the violent attack on our agency.”Houry’s statement seemed like a clear response to recent statements and actions to limit access to vaccines by the anti-vaccine health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.Dr Daniel Jernigan, who resigned as director of the premiere US center for the study of emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases, told colleagues: “I believe strongly in the mission of public health and the leadership that CDC has given for almost 80 years; however, given the current context in the Department, I feel it is best for me to offer my resignation.”Jernigan, whose center included the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, testified to Congress last year that the CDC estimates that the vaccination of children born between 1994 and 2021 “will prevent 472 million illnesses and 29.8 million hospitalizations, help avoid 1,052,000 deaths, and save nearly $2.2 trillion in total societal costs”.He also pointed to research that, as of November 2022, Covid-19 vaccines had “saved more than 3.2 million lives in the United States, prevented more than 18.5 million hospitalizations, and averted over $1.15 trillion in healthcare costs”.“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned on Wednesday from his position as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC told colleagues in an email obtained by STAT, a health news site.Those concerns were echoed by another departing CDC leader, Dr Deb Houry, the chief medical officer, who wrote that “ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency” adding that science should “never be censored or subject to political interpretations”.The two CDC leaders, and their colleague Daniel Jernigan, who ran the Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, quit the agency after the abrupt departure of Susan Monarez, the Senate-confirmed director of the CDC.US officials announced on Wednesday the departure of the director of the nation’s top public health agency, after less than one month in the job.“Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people,” the US Department of Health and Human Services wrote in a statement posted on social media.HHS officials did not explain why Monarez is no longer with the agency. Before the announcement was made, Monarez told the Associated Press: “I can’t comment.”Three senior officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resigned on Wednesday after the new CDC director Susan Monarez, abruptly left the agency.Shortly after the US Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, announced on social media that Monarez “is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention”, at least three CDC leaders resigned: Dr Debra Houry, the chief medical officer; Dr Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Dr Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.There was no immediate explanation for why any of the senior leaders have left the top US public health agency. Monarez was sworn in just four weeks ago. More

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      ‘Distracting the public’: group of health professionals call for RFK Jr to be removed

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      A grassroots organization of health professionals have released a report outlining major health challenges in the US and calling for the removal of Robert F Kennedy Jr from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).The report from Defend Public Health, a new organization of about 3,000 health professionals and allies, is an attempt to get ahead of misinformation and lack of information from health officials.In an effort to keep making progress in public health, Defend Public Health’s report was slated to coincide with that of the anticipated second US report to “make America healthy again” (Maha). The first Maha report was released in May, and a second report was expected this week – but amid turmoil at the health agencies, it has reportedly been delayed for several weeks.“The Maha report is essentially a distraction from the real causes of poor health,” said Elizabeth Jacobs, professor emerita at the University of Arizona and a founding member of Defend Public Health.“This administration does not want to address things like poverty and education and access to healthcare. Instead, they’re distracting the public with information on solutions to problems that don’t actually exist. When the foundation of your policy is not evidence-based, it will collapse.”The Defend Public Health report diverges from the previous Maha focus on issues such as processed foods and environmental chemicals, but it covers familiar ground in public health.The group highlights the importance of food safety, security and access to food, including through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), and improved opportunities for physical activity.They seek to ensure equitable access to vaccines; expand access to healthcare, including comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare access; and build strategies for clean air.The report also recommends fully funding scientific research and public health systems; combatting scientific misinformation, including from the US government; and strengthening pandemic preparedness. They call for reductions in gun violence, now the number one cause of death for children.And their last recommendation is to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), from office, calling his removal “the single most important step toward improving the health of Americans”.The recommendations are exactly what the US needs to address to become healthier, said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA). If you “look at the things that actually kill people, from the 10 leading causes of death, that is indeed the right list”.The US spends twice as much on healthcare as the next industrialized country, despite having poorer health outcomes, Benjamin pointed out.“The fracturing of our healthcare system undermines the accessibility of healthcare,” Benjamin said before noting that the US also spends less than other countries on the social determinants of health and social supports, and invests less in primary care and prevention.Such gaps are getting worse under the second Trump administration, with huge cuts to Medicaid, affordable housing, and nutrition programs like Snap.“If they’re serious about making America healthy again, I would suggest that we first begin by feeding children,” Jacobs said. “When, for example, RFK Jr is talking about food dyes, I don’t think that that is anywhere near as important as the fact that 13 million children in the United States do not know where their next meal is coming from.”Scientific misinformation is an “existential threat” to Americans, and the US government is a “major source” of misinformation and disinformation now, Jacobs said.The first Maha report “contains misinformation and uses references that don’t even exist”, she noted. The Defend Public Health report has a tongue-in-cheek note that it was “created by real human experts relying on real rigorous data”.Jacobs recommended working with social media companies, “one of the biggest amplifiers of misinformation”, to address the spread of harmful information. Educating children on how to evaluate the quality and accuracy of information is also important, she said.But one of the biggest purveyors of health misinformation is Kennedy himself.“Everything that he is doing is horrifying,” Jacobs said. “There is a saying in public health, ‘saving lives a million at a time’, and he is doing the opposite of that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe called him a “genuine threat” who is “devastating” public health.“He has no knowledge, training or experience in any type of science. He’s never done an experiment, he’s never written a paper, he’s never gotten a grant to study anything. He has no understanding of the underlying causes of poor health in the United States,” Jacobs said.Defend Public Health launched in November, after Trump’s re-election because, as Jacobs said, “it was very clear to us that public health specifically was going to be under attack.”“We knew that it was going to be a tough fight. I don’t think that any of us knew how bad this was going to get, how quickly. But we are doing everything in our power to support our fellow researchers, public health workers, anybody that we can, and also continue to get accurate information out to the public,” Jacobs said.The group joins other established health organizations as well as other newcomers like the Vaccine Integrity Project to serve as reliable sources of information.There’s a long history of groups like these providing outside perspectives on official recommendations, Benjamin said. But the federal government is uniquely positioned to speak to the health of all Americans.“Pediatricians certainly have the nation’s trust around vaccines for kids, but there’s a big debate about at what point does a kid become an adolescent, become an adult? At what point do they go into the adult health system?” he said.That creates confusion around which advice a patient should follow. The same may be true of a patient who becomes pregnant, or someone who may fall under the purview of multiple health organizations. It’s not always easy to know who belongs in which group.“We have to be careful that each of these private sector organizations align our recommendations, so that we don’t further confuse the public,” Benjamin said.Yet, Benjamin continued, “as the federal government withdraws in its responsibility to protect the public, groups like ours will become more influential in filling that void until we can get the federal government again to step up into that place as a trusted advisor.”Benjamin and Jacobs – and other experts in these groups – hope that the federal government will once again become a source of reliable information.“We really wanted to start building a framework so that we’re ready when we have the opportunity to start putting some of our policy recommendations in place,” Jacobs said.“There is just rampant chaos right now around public health and science related to this administration, and we have got to stand firm and keep bringing the conversation back to the actual causes of poor health among Americans. I can’t control what the government is going to decide to do. What we can do is continue to provide accurate information to the public.” More

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      Gunman in CDC attack fired over 180 shots at building and broke 150 windows

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      The man who attacked the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on Friday fired more than 180 shots into the campus and broke about 150 windows, with bullets piercing “blast-resistant” windows and spattering glass shards into numerous rooms, according to information circulated internally at the agency.It may take weeks or even months to replace windows and clean up the damage, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention personnel said.A Georgia man who had blamed the Covid-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal opened fire late on Friday, killing a police officer. No one at CDC was injured.The shooter was stopped by CDC security guards before driving to a nearby pharmacy and opening fire late Friday afternoon, a law enforcement official has told the AP. The official wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. The 30-year-old man, Patrick Joseph White, later died, but authorities haven’t said whether he was killed by police or killed himself.The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, traveled to Atlanta and on Monday met with the agency’s director, Susan Monarez.Monarez posted a statement on social media on Friday night that said at least four CDC buildings were hit in the attack.The extent of the damage became more clear during a weekend CDC leadership meeting. Two CDC employees who were told about what was discussed at the meeting described details to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to reveal the information. Details also were also in an agency memo seen by an AP reporter.Building 21, which houses Monarez’s office, was hit by the largest number of bullets. CDC officials did not say if her office was hit.CDC employees were advised to work from home this week.Kennedy issued a statement on Saturday that said “no one should face violence while working to protect the health of others,” and that top federal health officials were “actively supporting CDC staff”.He did not speak to the media during his visit on Monday.A retired CDC official, Stephan Monroe, said he worried about the long-term impact the attack would have on young scientists’ willingness to go to work for the government.“I’m concerned that this is going to be a generational hit,” said Monroe, speaking to a reporter near the corner where a poster had been set up in honor of David Rose, the officer who was killed.Kennedy was a leader in a national anti-vaccine movement before Donald Trump selected him to oversee federal health agencies, and has made false and misleading statements about the safety and effectiveness of about Covid-19 shots and other vaccines.Years of false rhetoric about vaccines and public health was bound to “take a toll on people’s mental health”, and “leads to violence”, said Tim Young, a CDC employee who retired in April.Dr Jerome Adams, the US surgeon general during President Trump’s first administration, said on Sunday that health leaders should appreciate the weight of their words.“We have to understand people are listening,” Adams told Face the Nation on CBS. “When you make claims that have been proven false time and time again about safety and efficacy of vaccines, that can cause unintended consequences.” More

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      Vinay Prasad returns to FDA days after leaving under pressure from Laura Loomer

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      Vinay Prasad is returning to his role overseeing vaccine, gene therapy and blood product regulation at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a little more than a week after he left the agency.“At the FDA’s request, Dr Vinay Prasad is resuming leadership of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research,” Department Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement to Reuters.Prasad left the agency on 30 July after just a few months as director of the center.Endpoints News, which covers the biotech industry, first reported the return of Prasad.Prasad, an oncologist who was a fierce critic of US Covid-19 vaccine and mask mandates, was named the center’s director by the FDA’s commissioner, Marty Makary, in May.Criticism of Prasad’s tenure intensified around the agency’s handling of a gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) from Sarepta Therapeutics.The FDA-approved therapy played a role in the death of two teens who had advanced DMD. After a third death in a separate experimental gene therapy from the company, the FDA asked Sarepta on 18 July to stop all shipments of the approved DMD therapy, saying it had safety concerns.The FDA changed course on Sarepta on 28 July and said shipments to the main group of patients for the drug could restart.Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer and conspiracy theorist with outsized sway over Donald Trump, had called Prasad a “progressive leftist saboteur” who was undermining the agency’s work.Two days before Prasad stepped down last month, Loomer had released misleadingly edited audio to suggest that that Prasad had admitted sticking pins in a Trump voodoo doll, when the full audio made it clear that he was talking about the kind of thing an imagined liberal Trump-hater would do.Loomer reacted to the news of Prasad’s return on Saturday by renewing her attacks on him in a social media post in which she promised to produce “exposes of officials within HHS and FDA” in the weeks ahead. “There are several Senate Confirmation hearings coming up and I have multiple oppo books ready for distribution!” she wrote.Prasad was a physician who joined the agency from the University of California, San Francisco. He has had stints at the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health.The FDA and other health agencies have seen multiple shake-ups in recent months under the leadership of health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. More

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      Friday briefing: What will US funding cuts on mRNA vaccines mean for the health of the world?

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      Good morning. You may have heard a saying along the lines that “when the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold”. So when the US health department announced plans to cut half a billion dollars in vaccine research funding on Wednesday, the world took notice.The US is the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, but this position has become more precarious with the appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime vaccine sceptic, as US health secretary.This week, Kennedy has announced plans to terminate 22 federal contracts for mRNA-based vaccines, casting doubt on the safety of a technology widely credited with helping end the Covid-19 pandemic and saving millions of lives.In total the affected projects are worth nearly $500m (£376m), according to the health agency. As for Kennedy, he said: “We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted.”The only problem? The scientific community in the US and around the world has overwhelmingly condemned the decision. To understand why, for today’s newsletter I spoke to Michael Head, a global health researcher at the University of Southampton. That’s after the headlines.Five big stories

      Israel-Gaza war | Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said his security cabinet had approved a plan to take over Gaza City after the prime minister earlier said Israel planned to take full control of the Palestinian territory. The decision early on Friday marks another escalation of Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Follow developments live

      Ukraine | Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ahead of an expected meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that Europe must participate in the peace process between Ukraine and Russia. As the Kremlin refused a three-way meeting with Zelenskyy and Trump, the Ukrainian president said: “Ukraine is not afraid of meetings and expects the same brave approach from the Russian side.”

      Economy | The chancellor and prime minister will begin to foreshadow tax rises and reforms from September to prepare the country for a difficult budget that could be held in November, the Guardian has been told. A rise in gambling levies – advocated by Gordon Brown – is thought to be near-guaranteed as part of the package of tax rises.

      UK news | Amnesty International has warned the Met police against arresting participants protesting this Saturday in London in support of Palestine Action.

      Labour | The UK homelessness minister, Rushanara Ali, resigned after it emerged she evicted tenants from her east London property before increasing the rent by almost £700 a month.
      In depth: ‘The mRNA vaccines saved about 20 million lives’View image in fullscreenThe first thing to understand is that mRNA vaccines work differently from traditional ones. The latter generally introduce a weakened or inactivated part of a virus to train the immune system to recognise and fight it in the future; whereas mRNA vaccines use a molecule that tells our cells how to make a viral protein, which triggers the body’s immune responses.This technology is a scientific gamechanger, to the extent the researchers behind it won the Nobel prize in 2023. But since rising to prominence during the Covid pandemic, mRNA vaccines have been dogged by misinformation (this analysis by my colleague Nicola Davis is well worth a read.)Michael Head tells me that mRNA technology offers a very effective and adaptable approach to developing vaccines. “It’s often described as plug-and-play because you can adapt constituents of the vaccine with, for example, the latest Covid variant.”For something like a flu vaccine, researchers need to incubate the virus and grow it, which takes weeks, Head explains. “That’s fine to an extent when it comes to producing an annual vaccine like we do for seasonal influenza, but the advantage to mRNA technology is that it can be updated so quickly that it allows us to produce new vaccines or update existing vaccines quicker, which can hopefully then reduce the threat of whatever infectious disease is present.”This is crucial during a pandemic such as Covid. “The mRNA vaccines saved about 20 million lives globally in the first year of their rollout,” Head says.Why is Kennedy doing this?Kennedy once described mRNA Covid vaccines as “the deadliest vaccine ever made”. On Wednesday, he justified the health agency’s decision to terminate research by claiming that data shows mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like Covid and flu”.Kennedy offered no scientific evidence to support this – and Head said Kennedy has been spreading vaccine misinformation for years. “He has on at least one or two occasions compared vaccines to being like the Holocaust, a common anti-vaccine trope.”He has also recently falsely claimed vaccines such as the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab contain “aborted foetus debris”; ordered a sweeping new study on the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism; and dismissed a panel of government vaccine experts, replacing them with his own appointees – who then voted to ban a longstanding vaccine preservative that has been a frequent target of the anti-vaccine movement despite its strong safety record.Kennedy claims he is shutting down research on mRNA vaccines and instead shifting funding to “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate”, and that mRNA vaccines “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics”.It’s just not true, though. Head says variants actually tend to emerge in the absence of vaccinations, and in people with long-term infections – often those who are immunocompromised and can’t get over the virus quickly. That gives the virus more chances to multiply and mutate.“Vaccines reduce the risk of transmission and infection,” Head says, which means fewer opportunities for the virus to mutate. “So vaccines will have a protective effect against new variants emerging, rather than as Kennedy suggests.”What impact will this have?The question of the next pandemic is not if, but when. History shows pandemics happen, Head says, pointing to the 1918 flu pandemic, swine flu, Sars, and of course Covid.Head says this is especially true in our era of globalisation and human encroachment into new environments. “If you create enough opportunities, a new virus will enter human beings. There might be a scenario where it runs out of control like we saw with Covid. Or, it might be a bit more like Sars, where we were able to get it under control within a couple of months.“But again, globalisation and the mixing of people and animals makes things more challenging. And so a pandemic will happen at some point. We just don’t know when.”Technologies like mRNA vaccines, then, are vital. Head added that the potential applications go far beyond infectious disease.“There’s quite promising research on skin cancer and the potential for this technology to be applied across different areas of health,” Head says. That is another reason Kennedy’s decision is so damaging, he adds.One of Head’s research areas focuses on how funding decisions impact science such as cancer research. “It’s very early days, but we are starting to see a slightly alarming picture. It’ll be very hard for the rest of the world to fill the cancer research gaps that the US is likely to leave.”Is this a worrying time for the scientific community?There is no way to sugarcoat it; this is a particularly alarming moment for scientists. The World Health Organization coined the term “infodemic” during the pandemic to describe the overwhelming amount of misinformation that spreads during a public health crisis, Head says. Even before Covid, in 2019 the WHO listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 global health threats.“I have huge concerns that if a pandemic happened again tomorrow, whether populations in the UK, US, and around the world would trust public health decision making that would be vital to mitigate the impacts of any new pandemic. So the role of misinformation is significant and it can be very severe,” Head warned.“It does not help that some of the most powerful people, like US president Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr, are making poor quality comments on vaccination because that does have an impact on population level decision making.”Some of Head’s research has looked into vaccine uptake in Ghana during the pandemic. The study found that political views played a big role in whether someone agreed to receive a Covid vaccine.“​​The government was saying, go and get vaccinated, please, but there was a fair amount of anti-government sentiment at the time. And hesitancy was greater if you voted for the opposition and therefore trusted the government messaging less. So there are lessons to be learned on who delivers the messaging to get your vaccine, and how to address that lack of trust in governance,” Head said.For now, the world holds its breath … and hopes no one sneezes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhat else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      Patrick Barkham’s piece about the recent hopeful surge of some wildlife is both a joyous celebration of animals’ resilience and a call for us to give them a helping hand. Lucinda Everett, newsletters

      I love this ranking of Daniel Day-Lewis films, and to learn that the triple Oscar winner has retired from acting, and returned twice. Aamna

      We asked our readers to share the strangest things they’ve found in a new home, and they didn’t disappoint. Forgotten placenta, anyone? Lucinda

      This story by my colleague Mark Townsend is extraordinary: it pieces together, using intelligence reports and witness testimony, how the RSF paramilitary began a massacre described as “genocidal” in Zamzam refugee camp. Aamna

      Daniel Boffey examines how David Lammy is wooing JD Vance, from inviting the US vice-president to pray with him, to shedding tears over his memoir. Lucinda
      SportView image in fullscreenTennis | Ahead of the Cincinnati Open, Emma Raducanu told Tumaini Carayol in an exclusive interview that she believes her new coaching partnership with Francisco Roig can help to take her game to the next level.Football | Liverpool have agreed a fee of £46.3m plus add-ons with Al-Hilal for Darwin Núñez. The Uruguay international is expected to complete a move to the Saudi Pro League once personal terms have been finalised.Cricket | The leader of the Tech Titans consortium that has bought 49% of London Spirit believes the Hundred will become a multibillion-dollar competition to rival the Indian Premier League.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian print edition reports “Netanyahu defies warnings over taking military control of all Gaza”. “Minister resigns over rental ‘hypocrisy” – that’s the Telegraph while the i paper expands on that: “UK’s minister for homelessness quits after she’s caught ejecting tenants and hiking rent”. “Minister for hypocrisy is forced to quit” the Mail delights. “Single-sex spaces ‘off limits to trans women’” says the Times. “Weight loss pill ‘on NHS’” and “Pill for weight loss on NHS” – the Mirror and Express both says it’s a possibility. Deep breath needed before reading the FT’s headline aloud: “BoE lowers rates but tight vote forces investors to rein in bets on more cuts”. “He’s our brave little miracle” reports the Metro, about a lifesaving “world-first operation” on a little boy.Something for the weekendOur critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right nowView image in fullscreenMusicAmaarae: Black Star | ★★★★☆Weaving elements of house, trance and EDM into Afrobeats rhythms and spiky rap cadences, the Ghanaian-American singer’s slick take on a club record is deliriously in love with wealth, celebrity and all the power it affords. But there is a difference between Amaarae and the other stars fixated on such topics: for her, glamour is a side quest and love is the motive. Shaad D’SouzaTVLucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? | ★★★★★
      Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby became, in tabloid parlance, “Britain’s worst child serial killer” when she was convicted in 2023 of seven murders and seven attempted murders of infants in her care. This brilliantly cogent documentary, which forces sentiment aside and unpacks the science and statistics around the most contested pieces of evidence, covers more ground more meticulously in an hour than any documentary I’ve seen in recent years, and perhaps ever. Lucy ManganFilmThe Kingdom | ★★★★☆
      Lesia, a moody 15-year-old, is sent to her mob boss father’s luxurious and fortified family compound , and she is thrilled when she quickly becomes lieutenant. There are fierce and overwhelmingly authentic performances from first-time actors in Julien Colonna’s intensely atmospheric, absorbing and exciting drama. Peter BradshawGamesTime Flies | ★★★★☆
      This perception-warping bug puzzler reimagines the inevitably short lifespan of a housefly as an absurd tragedy – by providing the soon-to-perish pest with a bucket list. Over the course of roughly a minute, players buzz around minimalist 2D environments trying to make those last wishes come true. By blending this thinky thesis with playful mechanics, it supplies a lighthearted canvas for players to engage with existentialism for an hour or two. Sarah ThwaitesToday in FocusView image in fullscreenInside China’s fast-fashion factories as a US trade war loomsThe Guardian’s senior China correspondent, Amy Hawkins, visits factories threatened by US tariffs in Guangzhou, south China, as the deadline for a US-China trade agreement approaches with no deal yet in sight.Cartoon of the day | Martin RowsonView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenLynx – shy wild cats no bigger than a Labrador – became extinct in Britain 1,300 years ago thanks to hunting and habitat loss. But a paper published in the Journal of Environmental Management says the animals could thrive in Northumberland’s Kielder Forest area. The paper found that releasing 20 lynx over several years would eventually create a healthy population of about 50 animals, bringing benefits like helping to curb the overpopulation of deer in woodlands. According to the researchers, Kielder Forest is the only area of England and Wales with enough woodland for lynx to thrive. But thankfully locals are keen on the plan, with 72% of people in the project area supporting reintroduction.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

      Quick crossword

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      RFK Jr’s health department to halt $500m in mRNA vaccine research

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      The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it would terminate 22 federal contracts for mRNA-based vaccines, questioning the safety of a technology credited with helping end the Covid pandemic and saving millions of lives.The unit, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, helps companies develop medical supplies to address public health threats, and had provided billions of dollars for development of vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic.HHS said the wind-down includes cancellation of a contract awarded to Moderna for the late-stage development of its bird flu vaccine for humans and the right to purchase the shots, as previously reported in May.The US health agency said it was also rejecting or canceling multiple pre-award solicitations, including proposals from Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, CSL Seqirus, Gritstone and others.In total, the affected projects are worth “nearly $500 million”, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said. Certain late-stage projects were excluded from the move “to preserve prior taxpayer investment”.This is the latest development under US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime vaccine skeptic who has been making sweeping changes to reshape vaccines, food and medicine policies.“We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted,” Kennedy said in a statement.Kennedy said the HHS is terminating these programs because data show these vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu”, but did not offer scientific evidence.“We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate,” Kennedy said.HHS said the decision follows a comprehensive review of mRNA-related investments initiated during the Covid-19 public health emergency.Since taking office, Kennedy, who spent two decades sowing misinformation around immunization, has overseen a major overhaul of US health policy – firing, for example, a panel of vaccine experts that advise the government and replacing them with his own appointees.In its first meeting, the new panel promptly voted to ban a longstanding vaccine preservative targeted by the anti-vaccine movement, despite its strong safety record.He has also ordered a sweeping new study on the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism.Unlike traditional vaccines, which often use weakened or inactivated forms of the target virus or bacteria, mRNA shots deliver genetic instructions into the host’s cells, prompting them to produce a harmless decoy of the pathogen and train the immune system to fight the real thing.Though in development for decades, mRNA vaccines were propelled from lab benches to widespread use through Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed – a public-private partnership led by Barda that poured billions into companies to accelerate development.The technology’s pioneers, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, were awarded the 2023 Nobel prize in medicine for their work contributing “to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times”. More

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      Health experts raise alarm over RFK Jr’s ‘war on science’ amid mass firings and budget cuts

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      The Trump administration’s “war on science” appears to have entered a new phase in the aftermath of a recent supreme court decision that empowered health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent vaccine sceptic, and other agency leaders, to implement mass firings – effectively greenlighting the politicization of science.The decision comes as Kennedy abruptly canceled a scheduled meeting of a key health care advisory panel, the US Preventive Services Task Force, earlier this month. That, combined with his recent removal of a panel of more than a dozen vaccine advisers, signals that his dismantling of the science-based policymaking at HHS is likely far from over.“The current administration is waging a war on science,” warned Celine Gounder, a professor of medicine and an infectious disease expert at New York University in a keynote talk in May to graduates of Harvard’s School of Public Health.“Today we see rising threats to the public health institutions that have kept our world safe for generations,” she said, citing “cuts to research that benefits the lives of millions, looming public health emergencies that are not being addressed with the urgency they demand, and a continued coordinated attack on the very idea of the scientific process.”Gounder added: “Over the past few months, we have seen the Trump administration engage not only in medical misinformation, but in active censorship of scientific discourse.”Since he took the helm at HHS, Kennedy’s unscientific views on vaccines and some other medical matters coupled with the agency’s widespread research and staff cuts, have prompted protests from scientists inside and outside HHS plus lawsuits.Medical experts say Kennedy’s policies are helping “sow distrust in vaccines” as measles cases soar to a more than three decade high, hurt vital healthcare research with draconian cuts, and helped foment a Trump administration “war on science” mentality.Kennedy sparked a firestorm in June by ousting 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which recommends vaccines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and votes to provide updates to its vaccine schedule. He then named a new eight person vaccine panel – half of whom share Kennedy’s distrust of vaccines – who quickly retracted recommendations for flu vaccines containing an ingredient which many anti-vaxxers have falsely connected to autism.That move sparked sharp criticism from veteran doctors with a national pediatric group, which opted to boycott its first meeting.“Among the reasons we decided not to participate was because it clearly appeared to be an orchestrated effort to sow distrust in vaccines,” Sean O’Leary who chairs a committee on infectious diseases with the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the Guardian.Dissent has also spread at the National Institutes of Health, where dozens of science researchers and other staff in June released a detailed document, dubbed the Bethesda Declaration, warning that key missions of the premiere research agency at HHS were being damaged by the Trump administration’s budget cutting.Even before these moves, prominent healthcare scholars were sounding loud alarms about some HHS policies and the administration’s anti-science mentality – including its draconian budget cuts for research and staff cuts totaling over 10,000.Gounder said there has been a “flood of Orwellian doublespeak from public health agencies”, contributing to declining vaccination rates and making Americans more susceptible to diseases like measles, which recently hit a level not seen since 2000 when measles was declared eliminated in the US.Her critique has been amplified by public protests from healthcare experts troubled by its vaccine policies and large cuts to research and staff at the Food and Drug Administration, the NIH and other parts of HHS.On a separate legal front, a Rhode Island federal court in July ruled against HHS and Kennedy and put a temporary stop to the drastic revamping of HHS and some of its staff cuts.The ruling provided a court victory to a group of 19 Democratic state attorneys general, plus the District of Columbia, which in May sued Kennedy – plus other HHS leaders such as the FDA commissioner and the CDC’s acting director – attacking the restructuring as an “unconstitutional and illegal dismantling” of the agency. Kennedy, they alleged, has “systematically deprived HHS of the resources necessary to do its job”.The Rhode Island judge wrote that as members of the executive branch, Kennedy and the HHS do “not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress”.For his part, Kennedy in March issued a statement defending the early HHS move to cut 10,000 full-time jobs: “We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic.”Those jobs have since been cut, as of Monday 14 July, after an 8 July order from the supreme court that allowed the restructuring plans to proceed. Many employees who were supposed to be laid off during the agency’s first round of 10,000 layoffs in April have been in limbo as the order made its way through the court system and later paused by federal judges. The reorganization, in addition to cutting staff, was supposed to consolidate the department’s 28 divisions into 15 and cut regional offices from 10 to five.Democrats in Congress too have voiced strong alarms about the thousands of HHS job cuts and their adverse impacts on healthcare and science.Ten congressional Democrats led by congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, whose district is home to thousands of NIH and FDA workers, wrote to Kennedy in March demanding the rehiring of thousands of illegally fired workers, warning of the “harmful consequences” for patient healthcare and science research.Raskin told the Guardian that Kennedy and the Trump administration’s actions reveal a “complete disregard for the law making powers of Congress. Trump wants to be both the implementer of the laws and the legislative branch, but that is not his job. It’s totally unconstitutional. They’re trying to cut off funds that have been lawfully appropriated by Congress”.O’Leary and many other medical experts warn that the dangerous ideologically driven cuts at HHS will have long-term consequences.“What we’re seeing across HHS is deeply concerning,” said O’Leary “NIH funding has never been politically or ideologically driven, but clearly that’s what we’re seeing now. Those cuts are going to have serious consequences for our country and healthcare.” More