\n<\/p>\n
Bernie Sanders has joined in on growing public calls for Donald Trump\u2019s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to resign, after recent chaos across US health agencies.<\/p>\n
In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Saturday, the Vermont senator accused Kennedy of \u201cendangering the health of the American people now and into the future\u201d, adding: \u201cHe must resign.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That\u2019s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr Kennedy have done exactly the opposite,\u201d Sanders wrote.<\/p>\n
Sanders pointed to the White House\u2019s firing of Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as four other top CDC officials who resigned in protest this week after Monarez \u201crefused to act as a rubber stamp\u201d for Kennedy\u2019s \u201cdangerous policies\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts,\u201d Sanders wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgainst the overwhelming body of evidence within medicine and science, what are secretary Kennedy\u2019s views? \u2026 He has absurdly claimed that \u2018there\u2019s no vaccine that is safe and effective\u2019\u2026 Who supports secretary Kennedy\u2019s views? Not credible scientists and doctors. One of his leading \u2018experts\u2019 that he cites to back up his bogus claims on autism and vaccines had his medical license revoked and his study retracted from the medical journal that published it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanders went on to add: \u201cThe reality is that secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of [the Department of Health and Human Services] he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pointing to what he described as \u201cour broken health care system\u201d, Sanders said that Kennedy\u2019s repeated attacks against science and vaccines will make it more difficult for Americans to obtain lifesaving vaccines.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlready, the Trump administration has effectively taken away Covid vaccines from many healthy younger adults and kids, unless they fight their way through our broken health care system. This means more doctor\u2019s visits, more bureaucracy and more people paying higher out-of-pocket costs \u2013 if they can manage to get a vaccine at all,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The senator warned that Kennedy\u2019s next target may be the childhood immunization schedule, which involves a list of recommended vaccines for children to protect them from diseases including measles, chickenpox and polio.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe danger here is that diseases that have been virtually wiped out because of safe and effective vaccines will resurface and cause enormous harm,\u201d Sanders said.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to This Week in Trumpland<\/span><\/p>\n A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In recent days, the Trump administration has faced rare bipartisan pushback following its firing of Monarez, which came amid steep budget cuts to the CDC\u2019s work as well as growing concerns of political interference.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Kennedy has continued to make questionable medical and health claims \u2013 and has been lambasted in response by experts and lawmakers alike.<\/p>\n Since he assumed leadership over the health department, Kennedy \u2013 a longtime anti-vaccine advocate \u2013 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 \u201cexistential threat to public health\u201d.<\/p>\n The health agency workers went on to accuse the health secretary of being \u201ccomplicit in dismantling America\u2019s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation\u2019s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information\u201d.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s father.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bernie Sanders has joined in on growing public calls for Donald Trump\u2019s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to resign, after recent chaos across US health agencies. In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Saturday, the Vermont senator accused Kennedy of \u201cendangering the health of the American people now and into the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[11253,1751,37,789,7844,2412,1207],"class_list":{"0":"post-18441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-bernie","9":"tag-demands","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-rfk","12":"tag-sanders","13":"tag-secretary","14":"tag-step"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}