In a remarkable development following Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ouster of the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, four other high-ranking officials have reportedly resigned.
Letters from three of the officials have been publicized thus far, and their messages include warnings that the agency’s mission has been compromised under RFK Jr.’s stewardship, with anti-vaccine policies and other growing misinformation.
The outgoing officials are Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Dr. Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology.
“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations. Vaccines save lives—this is an indisputable, well-established, scientific fact,” Houry wrote in an email to her colleagues. She added that “the overstating of risks and the rise of misinformation have cost lives,” citing a spike in measles as well as the August 8 shooting at the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters.
“My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud,” Daskalakis wrote in his resignation letter, which he shared on X. “I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.” He cited, among other agency actions, changes to the vaccine schedule for children and adults and the administration’s “efforts to erase transgender populations.”
“Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.”
Jernigan also informed her colleagues that, “given the current context in the Department, I feel it is best for me to offer my resignation.”
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