Susan Monarez, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is set to tell a Senate panel on Wednesday that she was fired “for holding the line on scientific integrity.”
Dr. Monarez will make her first detailed account of her ouster last month by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in prepared testimony obtained by The New York Times. In her comments, she will say she informed the health secretary that “if he believed he could not trust me, he could fire me.”
The hearing is also set to feature Dr. Debra Houry, the C.D.C.’s former chief medical officer and one of three leaders who recently quit the agency in frustration. She will tell lawmakers that Mr. Kennedy had “repeatedly censored” science and “politicized our processes,” according to her testimony.
The hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Health Committee will give Dr. Monarez an opportunity to tell her story publicly and answer questions. It will also put a spotlight on Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and the committee’s chairman, whose vote paved the way for Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation in February. Mr. Cassidy, who is also a physician, has been increasingly critical of Mr. Kennedy on vaccines.
Shortly after the White House fired Dr. Monarez, she wrote an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal saying that Mr. Kennedy had “pressured me to resign or face termination.”
She elaborated in her prepared remarks that Mr. Kennedy had given a choice: fire top C.D.C. officials responsible for vaccine policy and accept the recommendations of his handpicked advisers, or resign. Dr. Monarez told him to fire her after he said he could not trust her, she wrote.
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The post Former C.D.C. Director to Tell Lawmakers She Was ‘Fired for Holding the Line’ appeared first on New York Times.
