The leadership of the Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “unlike everything our country has experienced,” wrote nine former directors and interim directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a Stepped guest essay on Monday for The New York Times.
The piece, which appeared online under the headline “we directed the CDC: Kennedy is jeopardizing the health of all Americans,” came days after President Donald Trump fired the director of the CDC, Susan Monarch. Through his lawyers, Monaz has argued that he refused to sign reckless and non -scientific orders.
Kennedy’s actions as the country’s leading health official, including his role in the expulsion of Monarez, “is different from everything we have seen in the agency, already different from everything that our country has experienced,” wrote the former directors.
His essay listed a series of concerns and accused Kennedy of focusing “on ‘treatments’ not tested while minimizing vaccines.” Kennedy, they added, “they canceled investments in a promising medical investigation that will leave us poorly prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts in federal health advice committees with unqualified people who share their dangerous and non -scientific. citing unarmed investigations and establishing inacted statements. “
HHS and CDC spokesmen did not immediately respond to comments requests.
The essay was signed by William Foe, William Roper, David Sater, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle P. Walensky and Mandy K. Cohen. Their holdings date from the end of the 1970s and cover democratic and republican administrations, including Trump’s first mandate.
Monarez’s dismissal last week occurred in the midst of an increasing conflict about an influential vaccine committee that Kennedy had repeatedly undermined, NBC News reported. The secretary had fired the members of the Committee and appointed fellow skeptics of vaccines in their place. Monarch had worried that he would be forced to sign new recommendations of vaccines that were not backed by science. His expulsion caused an almost unfair leadership exodus of the CDC.
“We are concerned about the broad impact that all these decisions will have on the health security of the United States,” the former directors wrote in their guest essay.
“During our respective CDC holdings, we did not always agree with our leaders, but they never gave us reasons to doubt that they would trust ideas based on data for our protection, or that they would support public health workers,” they added.
The former directors urged Congress to “exercise their supervision authority” about HHS and asked state and local governments and philanthropic donors to “fill the financing gaps where they can.”
“The men and women who have joined the CDC through generations have not done so by prestige or power, but because they believe deeply in the call to the service,” they wrote in conclusion. “They deserve an HHS secretary who defends health, supports science and supports it. We also do our country.”
