Health secretary and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to roll back access to lifesaving vaccines for children, and has refused to even speak with staff scientists and subject-matter experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about evidence-based recommendations. That's according to former CDC officials who testified before the Senate on Wednesday.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) called ex-CDC director Susan Monarez to review the chaos that has engulfed the public health agency under Kennedy. Monarez, a microbiologist and long-serving federal employee, led the CDC as the first Senate-confirmed director for just 29 days before her dramatic ouster last month. She appeared before the HELP committee alongside Debra Houry, the former chief medical officer for the CDC. Houry had worked at the agency for a decade—spanning four administrations and six directors— before resigning in protest against Kennedy's leadership soon after Monarez's ouster.
Monarez’s ouster
Much of their testimony today was alarming, but not surprising. Upon her exit, Monarez claimed that she was fired because she refused Kennedy's demand that she agree in advance to approve changes to the CDC's childhood vaccine recommendations regardless of whether any scientific evidence supported the changes. She also claimed that Kennedy demanded that she fire CDC scientific leadership without cause, which she also refused to do. Similarly, when Houry resigned, she said Kennedy was censoring science, steamrolling CDC experts, and spreading misinformation. In the hearing today, the two stood by their previous comments and provided more details.
Their testimony today was partly in response to a Senate hearing earlier this month, in which Kennedy testified that Monarez is a liar and that he never demanded she preapprove vaccine recommendations. Instead, he claimed he had fired Monarez because she answered "no" when he asked her if she was a trustworthy person. In the hearing today, Monarez disputed that she was a liar and that she said she was not trustworthy. She reiterated her claims about why she was fired, saying Kennedy made the demands in an August 25 meeting.