Nine former leaders of the top US health body sounded the alarm on Monday about the Trump administration’s evisceration of the agency and warned that vaccine sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jnr is “endangering every American’s health”.
Advertisement
The blunt guest essay in The New York Times marks the latest in snowballing attacks on the US health secretary after the director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention was recently fired by US President Donald Trump after just weeks in her post.
Susan Monarez was fired last week after clashing with Kennedy and reportedly refusing to commit to supporting his vaccination policy changes.
The removal triggered the resignation of at least four top officials and plunged the agency deeper into chaos.
“We ran the CDC: Kennedy is endangering every American’s health,” warned the opinion piece penned by nine former leaders of the historically independent agency who served under every president, Democrat or Republican, from Jimmy Carter to Trump.
Advertisement
What Kennedy has done to the CDC and the nation’s public health system – “culminating in his decision to fire Dr Susan Monarez as CDC director days ago – is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced”, the experts wrote.