Senior CDC vaccine research and public health leaders who resigned in protest told hundreds of supporters across the street from campus on Thursday that the Trump administration needs to “get politics out of public health”.
The agency is reeling from the firing of the CDC chief, Susan Monarez, but Monarez, who was confirmed as CDC chief just a month ago, has refused to be removed. Four senior leaders – Debra Houry, Demetre Daskalakis, Daniel Jernigan and Jennifer Layden – then resigned in protest, citing the alleged spread of misinformation under the Trump administration and political interference in their work. The staffers cheered and applauded them at the event on Thursday.
“You are the people that protect America, and America needs to see that you are the people that protect America, and we are going to be your loudest advocates,” said Daskalakis to the throng. Daskalakis, who was accompanied at the rally by Houry and Jernigan, is now the former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and is known for his leadership in HIV prevention and vaccination programs and the Biden administration’s response to the mpox outbreak.
The three, plus Jennifer Leyden, who led the office of public health data, resigned together on Thursday to make a statement about the damage the administration had done to public vaccine research, and in protest of the administration’s response to vaccine disinformation, they said.
“We agreed to do this together. We’ve been talking about it for months, and then past few days, it was just escalating,” said Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer. “If one of us retired, it would have been a blip. When the three of us do it together, it’s more powerful and just shows the state of our agency.” She and the others are asking for Congress to intervene, to put a stop to political interference in the organization’s work.
The agency is overseen by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who in recent days restricted the use of Covid vaccines for Americans and has removed scientific advisers and cut funding for medical research. Kennedy has reportedly tapped the deputy health secretary, Jim O’Neill, an investor in libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel’s orbit, as the CDC’s interim leader. Monarez was the first CDC director in 50 years to not hold a medical degree. O’Neill would be the second.
The staff and supporters of the CDC gathered across the street from the campus in Atlanta, and Houry, Daskalakis and Jernigan were met with applause and handshakes, a marked difference from this morning when they were escorted off campus.
“They are essentially trying to undo a lot of the science that has been settled for vaccine policies,” Jernigan said. The dismissal “was a tipping point for us that we had to say we’ve got to do something. We need to get the politics out of public health. We need to make sure that we’re using objective science in the making of vaccine and other treatment decisions. Until we can do that and get back to that, ideology will be just driving the policies rather than the science driving the policies.”
The turmoil at the CDC comes as the agency is still recovering from the attack of a gunman who fired more than 500 rounds into the Atlanta offices before killing the DeKalb police officer David Rose. More than two weeks later, the White House had said nothing about the shooting, Houry said. Staffers were “concerned about speaking about vaccines in our science because they’re worried they’ll be targeted”, she said. “That’s unacceptable … This was an act of domestic terrorism. They need to address this.”
The shooting has done more than shaken up the staff. The community is questioning whether their lives are valued by the federal government, said Dr Jasmine Clark, an Emory University professor of microbiology and state representative in the suburbs north of Atlanta, who is running for Congress. The speed with which the event was organized – not a walkout, more like a long lunch – spoke to the sentiment in the building, she said.
“So many people in my community said they feel like no one values their life, and what am I doing when I go to work every day? It’s a privilege that people have no idea what happens in that building, and the fact that they don’t know means they’re doing a good job. But unfortunately we have an administration that does not value that work and in fact actively devalues the work and spreads misinformation that cost the life of Officer David Rose.”
