Nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention penned an opinion piece in the New York Times to slam Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday.
Former directors Dr. William Foege, Dr. William Roper, Dr. David Satcher, Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, Dr. Tom Frieden, Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Dr. Many Cohen, along with former acting directors Dr. Richard Besser and Dr. Anne Schuchat, wrote the op-ed.
“What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has done to the CDC and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as CDC director days ago — is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced,” the former directors wrote in the op-ed, titled “We Ran the CDC: Kennedy is Endangering Every American’s Health.”
Less than a month after she was confirmed to lead the health agency, the Trump administration fired Monarez. Other CDC officials have resigned over disagreements with the administration’s vaccine policy, CBS News reported.
The former CDC directors criticized Kennedy’s firing of thousands of health workers and for “severely [weakening] programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence, and more.”
“He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill-prepared for future health emergencies,” the former directors wrote. “He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views … And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage.”
“Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to the resignations of top CDC officials — adds considerable fuel to this raging fire,” the authors continued.
With Monarez gone, the former CDC directors said they worried that Kennedy’s decisions would put the country’s “health security” at risk.
They used Operation Warp Speed, which “produced highly effective and safe vaccines that saved millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic,” as an example of when the CDC relies on data-driven insights for the protection of all Americans.
The former directors called on Congress to act and use its authority over Kennedy’s department, and asked local governments to fill in funding gaps when they can.
“Philanthropy and the private sector must step up their community investments,” they wrote. “Medical groups must continue to stand up for science and truth. Physicians must continue to support their patients with sound guidance and empathy. And each of us must do what public health does best: look out for one another.”
On Saturday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, also wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling on Kennedy to resign.
“He has called the COVID-19 vaccines the ‘deadliest’ ever made despite findings cited by the [World Health Organization] that COVID shots saved over 14 million lives throughout the world in 2021 alone,” Sanders wrote.
“Secretary Kennedy is putting Americans’ lives in danger, and he must resign,” Sanders said later in his opinion piece. “In his place, President Trump must listen to doctors and scientists and nominate a health secretary and a CDC director who will protect the health and well-being of the American people, not carry out dangerous policies based on conspiracy theories.”
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