\n<\/p>\n
The surgeon general from the first Trump administration on Saturday said that the US president should \u201cabsolutely\u201d fire health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr over his \u201cdangerous\u201d policies on vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).<\/p>\n
Jerome Adams, who has become a pointed critic of the controversial public health decisions being swiftly rolled out in the second Trump administration, made his most fierce attack yet on what has been unfolding.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s putting us at risk,\u201d Adams said of RFK Jr, and is \u201cendangering America at large\u201d with moves to limit access to vaccines, such as shots to protect against the deadly Covid-19 virus.<\/p>\n
In an interview with CNN on Saturday morning, anchor Victor Blackwell asked Adams, who served as Donald Trump\u2019s surgeon general from 2017 to 2021, including through the height of the coronavirus pandemic, if Kennedy should resign.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, he\u2019s not going to resign,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n
Asked if, therefore, Trump should fire his health secretary, Adams said: \u201cI absolutely believe that he should, for the sake of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy was praised by the president after a stormy committee hearing in the US Senate on Thursday where Democrats called for his resignation or firing and accused him of ignorance and \u201creckless disregard for science and the truth\u201d.<\/p>\n
Although more muted, a select few Republicans were critical, including Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who had been a crucial vote to confirm Kennedy to his post, who said the secretary was \u201ceffectively denying people the vaccine\u201d with his policy positions. Kennedy had snapped back: \u201cYou\u2019re wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adams said he was \u201cflabbergasted\u201d by new restrictions from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month on who is eligible to receive the latest version of the Covid-19 vaccination and hoped that \u201cPresident Trump will begin to see the danger \u2026 to America\u201d of Kennedy\u2019s leanings and not be \u201cin thrall\u201d to his health secretary.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Adams was a co-author of a bipartisan opinion piece published in USA Today from three former surgeons general that said that Kennedy\u2019s actions to shake up the CDC were actions that \u201cjeopardize not only the institution\u2019s integrity but also the health and well-being of millions of Americans\u201d.<\/p>\n
The other authors were Jocelyn Elders, surgeon general in Democrat Bill Clinton\u2019s administration, and Richard Carmona, surgeon general under Republican George W Bush\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n
The CDC erupted in chaos in late August when the Trump administration fired the center\u2019s director Susan Monarez, who had been in post for mere weeks, in an apparent divide over vaccine policy \u2013 although she is refusing to leave. Several senior CDC leaders quit in protest at Kennedy\u2019s move to oust her. This followed his June firing of all 17 members of the CDC\u2019s advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) and replacement with some who publicly hold anti-vaccine views.<\/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 information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data 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 The three former surgeons general wrote that they were \u201cgravely concerned\u201d for the CDC as a \u201ccornerstone of public health in America and across the world\u201d that had saved countless lives through its science-driven approach, earning public trust.<\/p>\n \u201cThe recent turbulence at the CDC threatens to undermine this legacy, and we feel this is not just a bureaucratic or political issue. It\u2019s truly a matter of life and death,\u201d the article said.<\/p>\n Adams said in the CNN interview that organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Association have lost trust in the CDC under Kennedy\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n He warned that Kennedy could effectively destroy the CDC and was \u201cputting lives at risk by doing so\u201d.<\/p>\n Adams at times clashed with Trump when he was his surgeon general, including over policies over public masking during the pandemic.<\/p>\n On Saturday he warned that Kennedy\u2019s policies threatened public health in general but that Covid vaccine restrictions were \u201cspecifically endangering Black, Hispanic and Native American communities, who experienced death rates during the pandemic that were twice as high as white Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The surgeon general from the first Trump administration on Saturday said that the US president should \u201cabsolutely\u201d fire health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr over his \u201cdangerous\u201d policies on vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Jerome Adams, who has become a pointed critic of the controversial public health decisions being swiftly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2132,3284,77,4692,4818,328,1059,789,2324,9857,71,3213,2133],"class_list":{"0":"post-19532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-cdc","9":"tag-chaos","10":"tag-fire","11":"tag-general","12":"tag-kennedy","13":"tag-policy","14":"tag-president","15":"tag-rfk","16":"tag-robert","17":"tag-surgeon","18":"tag-trumps","19":"tag-urges","20":"tag-vaccine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19532","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=19532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}