\n<\/p>\n
Nine former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that Robert F Kennedy Jr\u2019s leadership of the US health and human services department is \u201cunlike anything our country has ever experienced\u201d and \u201cunacceptable\u201d. They also warned that Kennedy\u2019s leadership \u201cshould alarm every American, regardless of political leanings\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a guest essay for the New York Times, the former CDC leaders said Kennedy\u2019s actions were \u201cunlike anything we have ever seen at the agency\u201d.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s directives.<\/p>\n
In the essay, titled We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American\u2019s Health, the former leaders, including Rochelle P Walensky, Mandy Cohen and Tom Frieden, said they were concerned Kennedy is \u201cfocusing \u201con unproven \u2018treatments\u2019 while downplaying vaccines\u201d and cancelling medical research \u201cthat will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies\u201d.<\/p>\n
The former officials accused Kennedy of replacing \u201cexperts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views\u201d.<\/p>\n
The letter comes as the Trump administration is pushing back on criticism of Kennedy\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n
The White House said last week that Trump and Kennedy aim to make the agency \u201cmore public-facing\u201d and \u201cmore accountable,\u201d and that they would be \u201cstrengthening 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\u201d.<\/p>\n
The arguments over the direction of the CDC center in part on disagreements over vaccination policies.<\/p>\n
Monarez was reportedly fired after clashing with Kennedy over vaccine policy.<\/p>\n
In a sign that it is a debate even Trump can\u2019t escape, the president on Monday in a Truth Social post called on pharmaceutical companies to \u201cjustify\u201d the success of the Covid vaccines that were initiated during his first term.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump added that while the drug companies \u201cgo off to the next \u2018hunt\u2019 and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC\u201d, they should \u201cfigure out the success or failure\u201d of Covid drugs.<\/p>\n
The White Househas named deputy health secretary Jim O\u2019Neill to serve as acting CDC director. O\u2019Neill 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.<\/p>\n
Following Monarez\u2019s firing, hundreds of CDC staffers rallied outside the agency\u2019s headquarters in Atlanta in protest. Three senior CDC leaders, Debra Houry, Demetre Daskalakis and Daniel Jernigan, resigned from their posts.<\/p>\n
In Monday\u2019s Times editorial, the nine former CDC officials stepped in to Covid vaccine dispute, saying Operation Warp Speed \u201cproduced highly effective and safe vaccines that saved millions of lives\u201d during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring 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,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nine former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that Robert F Kennedy Jr\u2019s leadership of the US health and human services department is \u201cunlike anything our country has ever experienced\u201d and \u201cunacceptable\u201d. They also warned that Kennedy\u2019s leadership \u201cshould alarm every American, regardless of political leanings\u201d. In a guest essay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[540,2132,7997,37,4818,807,789,2324,5133],"class_list":{"0":"post-18606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-americans","9":"tag-cdc","10":"tag-endangering","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-kennedy","13":"tag-leaders","14":"tag-rfk","15":"tag-robert","16":"tag-slam"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18606","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=18606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}