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    ‘Americans should be alarmed’: Experts say loss of expertise at CDC will harm US health

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    After high-profile departures and sweeping layoffs, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) faces an unprecedented loss of expertise and a simultaneous erosion of trust as top health leaders undermine vaccines and other vital health tools.“Americans should be alarmed,” said Nirav Shah, former principal deputy director at CDC and now a visiting professor at Colby College. “All of these moves leave us less safe, and it comes at a time of rising public health threats.”Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the second Trump administration, vowed to strip the CDC of its ability to issue guidance on vaccines and to end required testing for new pathogens.The changes to US health will be felt for decades, and the cutbacks and changes will erode the public’s already wavering trust in health officials, experts say.“Losing top, experienced experts managing crucial units in the CDC is going to put all of us at risk,” said Dorit Reiss, professor of law at UC Hastings College of Law.The departure of four senior officials – Debra Houry, Demetre Daskalakis, Daniel Jernigan and Jennifer Layden – dealt “a big blow to our nation’s health preparedness”, Shah said.They joined thousands of health agency employees who have been laid off or resigned, with entire departments gutted, since Donald Trump was re-elected.“Next time there’s a problem, we will not have qualified leadership for our response,” Reiss said.The loss of “experienced, world-class” experts at the CDC is “directly related to the failed leadership of extremists” in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.The losses may continue under budget cuts, with proposed reductions of $5bn – a 42% decrease from 2024.Two of the recently ousted officials will testify before Congress on Wednesday. Susan Monarez, the most recent CDC director, who was fired after 28 days, criticized the administration’s “reckless” approach to science, including a request to “rubber-stamp” recommendations from the CDC’s independent advisers.The advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) plans to meet on Thursday and Friday. Advisers have indicated the committee will re-examine recommendations on routine childhood vaccinations such as those against hepatitis B and HPV (human papillomavirus).The Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy released on Tuesday “reaffirms that Kennedy is gunning for childhood vaccines”, Reiss said.Emily Hilliard, an HHS spokesperson, said: “Secretary Kennedy has been clear: the CDC has been broken for a long time. Restoring it as the world’s most trusted guardian of public health will take sustained reform and more personnel changes.”When asked about Kennedy’s stance on childhood vaccines, Hilliard said that HHS is “reaffirming the importance of the doctor-patient relationship so people can make informed decisions about their health”, emphasizing the roles of “clear, honest information and personal choice”.Kennedy has also limited access to the Covid vaccines, restricting them only to people “at higher risk”, while also saying “anyone can get the booster”.“Kennedy’s claim that anyone can get them is deeply insincere,” Reiss said. He already removed, for example, the recommendation for pregnant people, making it harder for them to access the vaccine.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“While it’s legal to give vaccines off-label, not all doctors and pharmacists will, and depending what ACIP does, not all insurers will cover them”, including Medicaid, which is bound by ACIP recommendations, she said.Kennedy has repeatedly undermined the CDC and vaccines, calling the agency a “cesspool of corruption” and the Covid vaccine, for instance, the “deadliest vaccine ever made”. During the worst measles outbreak in decades, Kennedy framed vaccination as a personal choice. He has also cut millions of dollars for research on mRNA vaccines.Earlier this month, Trump defended the Covid and polio vaccines. But the president has given Kennedy sweeping control over the nation’s health and nutrition agenda.“In an era of rising threats to public health – whether it’s measles, whether it’s an Ebola outbreak, or whether it’s the continuing concern and threat from H5 [bird flu] – none of these things makes America healthy again,” Shah said.The acting director of the CDC, Jim O’Neill, has a background in biotechnology investing but he does not appear to have training in medicine or public health.“Based on what I understand, he does not have the requisite background to even be serving as acting director,” said Shah, who was acting director of the CDC while the Trump administration entered office.“Americans need to ask themselves: ‘Are we safe right now?’” Shah said. “‘Is there somebody who knows at the higher levels what should be done in the face of an emerging Ebola outbreak? Are they doing it? How do we know that?’”The news that top experts at the CDC haven’t briefed Kennedy is “alarming”, Shah said. ”If America’s top generals were planning a war and sketching out battlefield plans but had not talked to any of their lieutenants and colonels in the field, we would say that’s not leadership.”So far, many Americans have not yet felt the shock waves of Kennedy’s changes to public health, Shah said.For most people, “you don’t actually see the consequences of it until there’s an emergency”, Shah said. “And it’s way too late at that point.” More

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      Guided by angels, pursued by chemtrails: the weird world of Florida health chief’s influential wife

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      The wife of Florida surgeon general Dr Joseph Ladapo, a leading vaccine skeptic, believes that angels have spoken to her and that “dark forces” are targeting her family with chemtrails, and has claimed her husband won’t work with anyone she hasn’t vetted.In published works and interviews reviewed by the Guardian, Brianna Ladapo – who edited her husband’s USA Today op-ed from March 2020 against Covid-19 shutdowns and appears alongside him at conferences – claims to have regularly received visions that come true and believes her life has been saved “multiple times” by angels.Joseph Ladapo, a longtime vaccine skeptic who was handpicked by Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has faced accusations by public health advocates of peddling “scientific nonsense”. Ladapo has defended his stances on vaccines and Covid guidance, stating in 2023 in response to allegations he falsified a Covid report: “Between my scientific experience and training, and the fact that I am only comfortable saying the truth and speaking the truth, I felt completely fine with that announcement.”He recently ended vaccine mandates for children in Florida against preventable diseases, including measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis, comparing mandates to “slavery” and claimed the move would receive the blessing “of God”. Florida is the first state in the US to do so.The Guardian made several attempts to reach Brianna Ladapo and Joseph Ladapo by email. They did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Florida department of health and DeSantis also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.In a Substack post on 5 September, Brianna Ladapo defended her husband’s decision to end vaccine mandates and claimed there are “dubious origins, nonexistent safety profiles, and dirty money trails surrounding vaccines”.She wrote in the post: “You believe in vaccines because you’ve been told to by a corrupt medical establishment that has a vested interest in keeping you subservient and stupid.”In a July 2025 podcast, Brianna Ladapo stated: “I often think if I hadn’t had to learn to trust my own gut and learn how to think and stand on my own two feet at such a young age, when Covid had come through, apparently swept away everyone’s brains, I might have been swept away right along with it if I didn’t already know how to listen to that truth that I believe is inside every single one of us.”She added in the podcast that “even to the lead-up, I was having visions, I was having dreams”, about the pandemic, before it began in early 2020. “Immediately, ridiculous inconsistencies started to show themselves.”She also appeared in an interview with the prominent anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense in January 2025, in which she said: “If we all listen to our intuition, we listen to that voice, we would not fall for propaganda. Like, what’s happened with Covid. People did truly insane things to keep from catching a virus that over, well over 99% of people survived without intervention, right? That’s textbook insanity.”Joseph Ladapo has appeared with his wife on stage at conferences on health and parenting.In Dr Ladapo’s 2022 memoir, Transcend Fear, he wrote that his wife has “a history of extraordinary experiences that were hard to explain with natural laws”. In March 2020, he wrote an op-ed for USA Today against shutdowns in response to Covid-19, the first of several he wrote about the virus, and noted that it was edited by his wife.Joseph Ladapo wrote in Transcend Fear that when he was recruited for the job of Florida surgeon general by DeSantis, his wife claimed it was the message she was waiting for.In Brianna Ladapo’s 2023 memoir, she claimed “as long as I can remember, I have received communications from beings beyond this realm. Even as a young child, angels regularly spoke to me.”She added that “since I was born, I have also received constant communications in the form of visions” and that “eventually, every single one of them came to pass”.In the book, Brianna Ladapo claims she went on a “pilgrimage” trip to Egypt in graduate school during which she saw the rest of a “recurring vision” from a past life.In a video podcast on Rumble earlier this year, she reiterated these claims about her “gifts”.“I was born a very sensitive child, the kind of kid who would see angels and talk to beings that no one else could necessarily perceive,” she said, claiming her family “perceived what was happening to me as satanic and demonic and evil”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I saw a lot of angels, but my angels would talk to me and they saved my life multiple times,” she claimed.Brianna Ladapo also claimed their children together “have all been having experiences like this since they were born” and have “innate divine intelligence”.She claimed one of her children as a baby had “a gift” that was temporarily shared with her.“I started to hear conversations that sounded like they were right next to me. There were no people anywhere near us. And they were clearly from different eras, sometimes different countries, different languages and dialects,” Ladapo said.She said initially in their relationship, her husband was skeptical, but came to believe in her “gifts”.“After a number of years, he came to deeply trust my gift and now he won’t work with anybody I haven’t vetted,” she said. The couple did not respond to requests for comment about Brianna Ladapo’s vetting.Later in the podcast, Ladapo claimed she floated an inch above the ground during a session with a former Navy Seal and self-proclaimed traditional healing guru, whom she said her husband had also seen and had similar experiences with. The healer declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.Ladapo is also a proponent of the chemtrails conspiracy theory about planes mass-dumping chemicals. She claims in the podcast interview that she and her children got sick because of chemtrails, and she used a patch that has been characterized as pseudoscience by medical experts.“As we try to chase down where this is coming from, who is funding the companies who are flying the planes, who are piloting these planes, where are they taking off? We don’t even know where they are, because none of this is on the books.” Ladapo said about chemtrails.She added in the podcast interview about a photo of a Florida sky outside of her home: “This is how the chemtrails have been looking outside our window for the past few weeks. They are, I hate to say it, but that looks like a pentagram and they’ve been plastering it in the sky right outside our house for the last few weeks.”She characterized the perceived chemtrailers as “dark forces” out to get her and her husband.“They’ve been trying to stop us for years,” she claimed. “We are operating at a level of light that puts us essentially out of the grasp of those with a very low vibration, very evil intention.” More

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      Rinse and repeat: US vaccine hearing on unpublished study debates same myths

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      A congressional hearing on Tuesday titled “How the Corruption of Science Has Impacted Public Perception and Policies Regarding Vaccines” largely consisted of a debate over an unpublished study comparing chronic illnesses in children who received vaccines with those who didn’t.The study was lead-authored by Marcus Zervos of Henry Ford Health, completed in 2020, and never submitted for publication, according to testimony during the hearing. Senator Ron Johnson, the chair of the subcommittee for the hearing, and the witness Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has represented RFK Jr and the anti-vaccination non-profit Informed Consent Action Network, both claimed the study was not submitted because the authors would lose their jobs were it to be published.Zervos and the other authors of the study were not present at the hearing. The study, which has never been peer-reviewed, is not currently available to the public as a pre-print or in any other form.Henry Ford Health’s communication office did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.The only information that is currently publicly available about the study comes from the hearing itself, including witness testimony and a brief trailer for a documentary from the Informed Consent Action Network. The trailer says the study found that “amongst the unvaccinated group, there was zero brain dysfunction, zero diabetes, zero behavioral problems, zero learning disabilities, zero intellectual disabilities, zero tics and zero other psychological disabilities”.The trailer also includes a clip of Donald Trump saying: “A few decades ago, one in 10,000 children had autism. Today, it’s one in 31.”Witnesses on both sides of the debate during the hearing agreed that the study in question found no link between vaccines and autism.Jake Scott, a clinical associate professor of infectious diseases at Stanford – and the only physician who served as a witness during the hearing – had a different explanation as to why the study was not published.In his testimony, Scott said that the study is “fundamentally flawed”, adding that its core problem was that “vaccinated children had twice the follow up time and substantially more healthcare visits than unvaccinated children”. More healthcare visits mean more opportunities to be diagnosed with conditions like ADHD.Scott went on to explain that “the study reports zero ADHD cases among 1,000s of unvaccinated children. How is that possible with a national prevalence at 11%? That’s highly unlikely, unless conditions went undiagnosed.” Scott noted that the study also claimed a six to eightfold increase in ear infections among vaccinated children, but there is no plausible scientific explanation as to why vaccines would increase ear infections.This finding is consistent with past research showing that parents who do not vaccinate their children are also less likely to have their children treated for health conditions in the medical system. Conditions that were not diagnosed or treated would not have shown up in the study, which relied on medical records, according to hearing testimony.Siri claimed the authors of the study ran sensitivity analyses to account for the differences in medical care. These are not available to the public.As a point of comparison, Scott referenced a Danish study published this July in Annals of Internal Medicine which investigated whether childhood vaccines were linked to 50 different conditions, including many of the same conditions from the unpublished study, like ADHD, autism, asthma, food allergies and eczema. The Danish study looked at outcomes in over a million vaccinated children and 15,000 unvaccinated children, while the unpublished study looked at 18,500 vaccinated children and 2,000 unvaccinated children, according to hearing testimony.The Danish study found no statistically significant increase in risk for any of the conditions investigated, and that vaccinated children experienced lower rates of certain conditions, like ulcerative colitis.Johnson and Siri expressed skepticism over the Danish study, noting that the authors have not released the de-identified raw data they used for their conclusions. No data is available about the unpublished study.Later in the hearing, the conversation turned towards skepticism about vaccines in general and the Covid-19 vaccine specifically.Some graphics that Johnson shared left out critical information. For example, a line chart he introduced accurately showed that measles death rates had already begun to decline significantly before vaccines were introduced in the 1960s, due to other factors like improved sanitation, healthcare access and nutrition, but the chart stops in 1960. After vaccines were introduced and widely adopted, both measles cases and death rates declined to nearly zero.Measles was effectively eliminated in the US in 2000, but cases reemerged when vaccine adoption decreased. There have been 35 measles outbreaks in 2025, according to the CDC. At least two US children and one adult have died of measles this year.Scott, the Stanford witness, had trouble answering some questions based on spurious facts. He was silent for a moment when Johnson asked him “Did you believe when Fauci told us that the [Covid] mRNA shot would stay in the arm?” There is no credible evidence that Fauci ever said this.Toby Rogers, a fellow at the Brownstone institute whose study linking vaccines and autism was retracted said: “I believe we are in the midst of one of the greatest crimes in human history,” referring to vaccines. In now-deleted tweets, Rogers has called for hearings similar to the Nuremberg trials for public health officials who promote vaccines.When Senator Richard Blumenthal, the ranking member of the hearing subcommittee, asked if Rogers believes the Covid-19 vaccine is comparable to the Holocaust, several audience members applauded. More

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      Trump’s former surgeon general urges president to fire RFK Jr

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      The surgeon general from the first Trump administration on Saturday said that the US president should “absolutely” fire health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr over his “dangerous” policies on vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Jerome Adams, who has become a pointed critic of the public health decisions being swiftly rolled out in the second Trump administration, made his most fierce attack yet on what has been unfolding.“He’s putting us at risk,” Adams said of RFK Jr, adding that Kennedy is “endangering America at large” with moves to limit access to vaccines, such as shots to protect against the deadly Covid-19 virus.In an interview with CNN on Saturday morning, anchor Victor Blackwell asked Adams, who served as Donald Trump’s surgeon general from 2017 to 2021, including through the height of the coronavirus pandemic, whether Kennedy should resign.“Well, he’s not going to resign,” Adams said.Asked whether, therefore, Trump should fire his health secretary, Adams said: “I absolutely believe that he should, for the sake of the nation.”Kennedy was praised by the president after a stormy committee hearing in the US Senate on Thursday where Democrats called for his resignation or firing and accused him of ignorance and “reckless disregard for science and the truth”.Although more muted, a select few Republicans were critical, including Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who had been a crucial vote to confirm Kennedy to his post, who said the secretary was “effectively denying people the vaccine” with his policy positions. Kennedy snapped back: “You’re wrong.”Adams said he was “flabbergasted” by new restrictions from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month on who is eligible to receive the latest version of the Covid-19 vaccination and hoped that Trump “will begin to see the danger … to America” of Kennedy’s leanings and will not be “in thrall” of his health secretary.On Friday, Adams was a co-author of a bipartisan opinion piece published in USA Today from three former surgeons general that said that Kennedy’s actions to shake up the CDC were actions that “jeopardize not only the institution’s integrity but also the health and well-being of millions of Americans”.The other authors were Jocelyn Elders, surgeon general in Democrat Bill Clinton’s administration, and Richard Carmona, surgeon general under Republican George W Bush’s presidency.The CDC erupted in chaos in late August when the Trump administration fired the center’s director Susan Monarez, who had been in the post for mere weeks, in an apparent divide over vaccine policy – although she is refusing to leave. Several senior CDC leaders quit in protest at Kennedy’s move to oust her. This followed his June firing of all 17 members of the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) and his replacing them with some who publicly hold anti-vaccine views.The three former surgeons general wrote that they were “gravely concerned” for the CDC as a “cornerstone of public health in America and across the world” that had saved countless lives through its science-driven approach, earning public trust.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The recent turbulence at the CDC threatens to undermine this legacy, and we feel this is not just a bureaucratic or political issue. It’s truly a matter of life and death,” the article said.Adams said in the CNN interview that organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association have lost trust in the CDC under Kennedy’s leadership.He warned that Kennedy could effectively destroy the CDC and was “putting lives at risk by doing so”.Adams at times clashed with Trump when he was his surgeon general, including over policies over public masking during the pandemic.On Saturday, he warned that Kennedy’s policies threatened public health in general but that Covid vaccine restrictions were “specifically endangering Black, Hispanic and Native American communities, who experienced death rates during the pandemic that were twice as high as white Americans”.The day after the Senate hearing, former Massachusetts Democratic representative Joe Kennedy III, RFK Jr’s nephew, posted a statement on X calling the health secretary “a threat to the health and wellbeing of every American” and urging him to resign.Echoing that call to resign was one of the secretary’s siblings, Kerry Kennedy, who also posted on X and decried what she called “the decimation of critical institutions, like the [National Institutes of Health] and the CDC”. More

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      RFK Jr accused of ‘reckless disregard for science and the truth’ in Senate hearing

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      The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, faced the Senate finance committee in a tense and combative hearing on Thursday, during which lawmakers questioned his remarks expressing vaccine skepticism, claims that the scientific community is deeply politicized and the ongoing turmoil plaguing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).In a hearing lasting more than three hours and ostensibly about the Trump administration’s healthcare agenda, Kennedy defended his leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), claiming that his time at the agency will be focused on “unbiased, politics-free, transparent, evidence-based science in the public interest”.Senate Democrats on the committee began the hearing calling for Kennedy’s resignation. “Robert Kennedy’s primary interest is taking vaccines away from Americans,” ranking member Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon, said in his opening remarks. “People are hurt by his reckless disregard for science and the truth in this effort. I hope the very least, Robert Kennedy has the decency to tell the truth this morning.”Raphael Warnock, also a Democrat, called Kennedy a “hazard to the health of the American people”, repeating calls for him to step down or for Donald Trump to fire him.Last week, Kennedy fired the CDC director, Susan Monarez, less than a month after she was confirmed to her position. She is now mounting a legal case challenging her removal.Shortly after Monarez’s termination, several leading public health officials at the CDC resigned from their positions, citing frustration with Kennedy’s approach to vaccines and his management style.Kennedy said Monarez was “lying” about her claims that she was fired for refusing to sign off on the secretary’s new vaccine policies. Instead, Kennedy said that she was removed after admitting to being untrustworthy.The Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, was unconvinced – citing Kennedy’s prior characterization of the former CDC director as “unimpeachable”.“You had full confidence in her and you had full confidence in her scientific credentials, and in a month she became a liar?” she asked. Thom Tillis, the outgoing Republican senator of North Carolina, asked about the same contradiction in his questioning.Monarez’s lawyers responded in a statement to Kennedy’s comments, calling them “false” and “at times, patently ridiculous”. They added that Monarez would repeat her published claims “under oath”.Kennedy also justified wider firings at the CDC , calling them “absolutely necessary”.“We are the sickest country in the world,” he said. “That’s why we need to fire people at CDC. They did not do their job. This was their job to keep us healthy.”In June, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee – a move that defied a promise he made during his confirmation hearing to Republican senator Bill Cassidy, a physician who chairs the Senate health committee. Many of Kennedy’s replacements for the advisory panel have a history of vaccine skepticism.When asked about the changes to the advisory committee, and how that will change vaccine recommendations and scheduling, Kennedy said he didn’t anticipate changes to the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.In an exchange with Kennedy, Cassidy noted the possible conflict of interest with some of the panel’s new members who are involved in ongoing litigation with vaccine manufacturers.Cassidy cast a critical vote to confirm Kennedy earlier this year. He had previously expressed a number of concerns about the health secretary’s historic comments that undermined vaccine efficacy. The senator has since been critical of a number of Kennedy’s policies, including his decision to cut half a billion dollars worth of mRNA vaccine funding – calling the move “unfortunate”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the new batch of Covid-19 vaccines, but placed restrictions on who would be able to access them. The agency has authorized shots for people 65 and older, who are known to be more at risk from serious illnesses from Covid infections. Younger people will only be eligible if they have an underlying medical condition that makes them vulnerable. Infectious disease experts say that this policy could prove extremely dangerous, particularly for young children.On Tuesday, Kennedy defended HHS’s handling of the measles outbreak that affected several states in an opinion piece. While the secretary branded his agency’s response as effective, public health experts said Kennedy’s own messaging around vaccines was muddied and confusing.Cassidy concluded his remarks at the hearing by telling Kennedy that his policies were “effectively denying people the vaccine”, sharing an email from a doctor friend who expressed confusion about Covid inoculation eligibility given the FDA’s new recommendation policies.Kennedy snapped back: “You’re wrong.”The Republican senator John Barrasso, of Wyoming, also a doctor, expressed similar concerns about Kennedy’s policies. “In your confirmation hearing you promised to uphold the highest standard for vaccines,” Barrasso said. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.”During a back and forth with the Virginia senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, Kennedy falsely claimed that there are “no cuts to Medicaid” under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – Trump’s hallmark domestic policy legislation that was signed into law in July.The congressional budget office estimates that around 7.8 million people stand to lose their health insurance over a decade, due to Medicaid changes under the law.Multiple Democrats on the committee had heated exchanges with the health secretary. Many of them pointed out the inconsistency between Kennedy’s recent support for the president’s “Operation Warp Speed” and his disparagement of the Covid-19 shot. He has previously called it the “deadliest” vaccine ever manufactured.At the hearing, Kennedy refused to acknowledge the wealth of data that shows that the Covid-19 vaccine has saved lives.“Trump has said the vaccine works, and has saved millions of lives. Your own process, on the other hand, has not been transparent,” said the Democratic senator Maggie Hassan, of New Hampshire. “You repeatedly choose to ignore data because it doesn’t match your preconceived notions and lies.” More

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      Former CDC leaders slam RFK Jr for endangering Americans’ health

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      Nine former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s leadership of the US health and human services department is “unlike anything our country has ever experienced” and “unacceptable”. They also warned that Kennedy’s leadership “should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings”.In a guest essay for the New York Times, the former CDC leaders said Kennedy’s actions were “unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency”.The letter comes days after Kennedy sought to dismiss Susan Monarez, the CDC director he appointed just months earlier. Monarez refused to leave her post, and was later fired by Donald Trump. Monarez said through lawyers the clash came after she refused to sign off on Kennedy’s directives.In the essay, titled We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health, the former leaders, including Rochelle P Walensky, Mandy Cohen and Tom Frieden, said they were concerned Kennedy is “focusing “on unproven ‘treatments’ while downplaying vaccines” and cancelling medical research “that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies”.The former officials accused Kennedy of replacing “experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views”.The letter comes as the Trump administration is pushing back on criticism of Kennedy’s leadership.The White House said last week that Trump and Kennedy aim to make the agency “more public-facing” and “more accountable,” and that they would be “strengthening our public health system and restoring it to its core mission of protecting Americans from communicable diseases, investing in innovation to prevent, detect and respond to future threats”.The arguments over the direction of the CDC center in part on disagreements over vaccination policies.Monarez was reportedly fired after clashing with Kennedy over vaccine policy.In a sign that it is a debate even Trump can’t escape, the president on Monday in a Truth Social post called on pharmaceutical companies to “justify” the success of the Covid vaccines that were initiated during his first term.“Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.”Trump added that while the drug companies “go off to the next ‘hunt’ and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC”, they should “figure out the success or failure” of Covid drugs.The White Househas named deputy health secretary Jim O’Neill to serve as acting CDC director. O’Neill is a biotech investor and former speechwriter for the health department during the George W Bush administration. He can only serve as an interim leader of the agency until a permanent director is confirmed by the Senate.Following Monarez’s firing, hundreds of CDC staffers rallied outside the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta in protest. Three senior CDC leaders, Debra Houry, Demetre Daskalakis and Daniel Jernigan, resigned from their posts.In Monday’s Times editorial, the nine former CDC officials stepped in to Covid vaccine dispute, saying Operation Warp Speed “produced highly effective and safe vaccines that saved millions of lives” during the pandemic.“During our respective CDC tenures, we did not always agree with our leaders, but they never gave us reason to doubt that they would rely on data-driven insights for our protection, or that they would support public health workers,” they added. More

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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