Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), defended his response to the largest measles outbreak in the US in 33 years in a new editorial, calling it an example of “what a focused” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “can achieve”.
Kennedy did so in a Wall Street Journal editorial published on Tuesday, which coincides with extreme tumult at the CDC and strong claims from a former employee that the secretary wasn’t even briefed on the measles outbreak.
In the piece, Kennedy praises his agency’s handling of the outbreak in west Texas, which hospitalized nearly 100 people and killed two children earlier this year.
He argued that the outbreak “ended quickly, proving the CDC can act swiftly with precision when guided by science and freed from ideology”, described the CDC’s response as “effective” and said that “effectiveness – not politics – will be the watchword of our leadership.”
The outbreak, which affected several states, was officially declared over by local officials on 18 August. Throughout the crisis, Kennedy faced criticism from some health experts who described his messaging as inconsistent. They pointed out that while he acknowledged the importance of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, he also framed vaccination as a “personal choice” and promoted and endorsed alternative treatments such as vitamins and cod liver oil.
The editorial arrives amid growing calls for his resignation, triggered by a disastrous few weeks at the CDC. Last week, the White House abruptly fired the CDC director, Dr Susan Monarez, claiming that she did not “align” with Donald Trump’s agenda. She also reportedly clashed with Kennedy over vaccine policy.
Her ousting triggered the resignations of several other senior CDC officials, including Dr Demetre Daskalakis, the former head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC.
In a recent interview, Daskalakis even said that Kennedy has never been briefed by CDC experts on several health issues including measles, Covid-19 or the flu.
“No one from my center has ever briefed him on any of those topics,” Daskalakis told CNN. “Perhaps he has alternate experts that he may trust more than the experts at CDC that the rest of the world regards as the best scientists in the areas.
“He’s getting information from somewhere, but that information is not coming from CDC experts who really are the world’s experts in this area … and he’s not taking us up on several offers to brief him on these very important topics,” Daskalakis added.
On Wednesday morning, more than 1,000 current and former HHS employees signed a public letter demanding Kennedy’s resignation.
The letter accused Kennedy of putting US public health at risk and criticized his role in firing Monarez. It also blasts him for “appointing political ideologues” to influential vaccine policy positions, “refusing to be briefed by well-regarded CDC experts on vaccine-preventable diseases” and “rescinding the FDA’s emergency use authorizations for Covid-19 vaccines”.
Earlier this week, nine former CDC officials penned a guest essay in the New York Times in which they called Kennedy’s leadership “unlike anything our country has ever experienced” and “unacceptable”.
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They warned that his leadership “should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings”, and said that “amid the largest measles outbreak in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines”.
Last month, more than 750 current and former HHS staffers sent a separate letter to Kennedy after the 8 August shooting at the CDC headquarters that killed a police officer. In that letter, the staffers accused him of fueling harassment and violence directed at government healthcare staff.
Despite the mounting pressure, Kennedy did not address Monarez’s firing, the subsequent resignations or the growing calls for his resignation in his editorial this week.
Instead, Kennedy defended the Trump administration’s role in what he described as “restoring public trust” in the CDC, which he argued had been “corroded” in recent years by “bureaucratic inertia, politicized science and mission creep”.
Kennedy, who previously founded an anti-vaccine group, also criticized the CDC’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, calling it a “failure”, and blasted policies such as social distancing, mask mandates, lockdowns, and “the suppression of low-cost therapeutics in favor of experimental and ineffective drugs”.
Kennedy is scheduled to testify before the Senate finance committee on Thursday for a hearing on Trump’s healthcare agenda, according to the committee’s website.
