The essay, which was written by nine past directors and acting directors, comes at a time when President Trump fired director Susan Monarez ...
The essay, which was written by nine past directors and acting directors, comes at a time when President Trump fired director Susan Monarez last week, which has caused a lot of trouble.
Nine former directors and acting directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote a harsh guest essay for The New York Times on Monday. They said that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s leadership is "unlike anything our country has ever experienced."
The article, with the title "We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American's Health," came out online a few days after President Trump fired Susan Monarez as head of the CDC. Through her lawyers, Monarez has said that she wouldn't sign off on orders that were dangerous or based on science.
They wrote that Kennedy's acts as the country's top health official, such as his part in getting rid of Monarez, were "unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country has ever experienced."
In their essay, they talked about a lot of problems and said Kennedy was focused on "unproven 'treatments' while downplaying vaccines." They also said that Kennedy "stopped investments in promising medical research that will leave us unprepared for future health emergencies." He took the places of experts on government health advisory committees with people who aren't qualified but agree with his dangerous and unscientific ideas. He said that the U.S. would no longer back global vaccination programs that keep Americans and millions of children safe, citing bad research and making false claims.
When asked for comments, HHS and CDC spokespeople did not reply right away.
William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle P. Walensky, and Mandy K. Cohen all signed the article. They have been in office since the late 1970s, during both Democratic and Republican administrations, and during Trump's first term.
CNN reported that Kennedy had been undermining an important vaccine group over and over again, which led to Monarez's firing last week. The secretary fired people on the committee and put in their place people who also didn't believe in vaccines. Monarez was getting scared that she would have to agree to new vaccine suggestions that were not based on science. When she was fired, almost all of the CDC's top leaders left right away.
“We are worried about the wide-ranging effects that all of these choices will have on the health security of the United States,” the former directors wrote in their guest article.
"During our time as C.D.C.s, we didn't always agree with our leaders, but they never made us doubt that they would protect us with data-driven insights or stand up for public health workers," they said.
They asked Congress to "exercise its oversight authority" over HHS and asked state and local governments and private donors to "fill funding gaps where they can."
"The men and women of all ages who have joined C.D.C. have done so not for fame or power, but because they deeply believe in the call to service," they wrote at the end. "They deserve an HHS secretary who cares about them, has their back, and fights for health." Our country feels the same way.