Susan Monarez, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ousted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told senators on Wednesday that the secretary was a threat to trust in the public health system. Dr. Monarez, testifying alongside the C.D.C.’s former chief medical officer before the Senate health committee, said she feared Mr. Kennedy’s ideology would cause preventable diseases to surge back, harming America’s children.
Dr. Monarez testified that Mr. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, had pressed her to approve vaccine recommendations without seeing the science behind them, and urged her to meet with Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has filed numerous lawsuits undercutting vaccines and who became a flashpoint in Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation hearings. The chief medical officer, Dr. Deb Houry, recounted having to rapidly respond to Mr. Kennedy’s false statements disparaging vaccines. “He said things like ‘vaccines had fetal parts,’ and I had to send a note to our leadership team to correct that misinformation,” Dr. Houry said.
The committee chairman, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, who has challenged Mr. Kennedy on vaccine policy, opened the hearing by announcing it was a “direct response” to President Trump’s desire for “radical transparency.” Senator Bernie Sanders, Democrat of Vermont, was blunt, saying Mr. Kennedy “does not believe in established science” and “listens to conspiracy theorists.”
Here’s what to know:
Vaccines: Dr. Monarez testified that Mr. Kennedy told her the childhood vaccine schedule would change in September while asserting that “there was no science or evidence” behind the existing recommendations. Dr. Monarez testified that she was asked to agree to sign off on recommendations related to the Covid vaccine without seeing the data or science underlying them. The U.S. has already seen a measles resurgence this year, and whooping cough cases are higher than before the Covid pandemic.
Testimony: Dr. Monarez said she lost her job for “holding the line on scientific integrity” after refusing Mr. Kennedy’s demands to fire top C.D.C. vaccine officials and accept without question the recommendation of the newly reconstituted immunization advisory committee. She said she told Mr. Kennedy that “if he believed he could not trust me, he could fire me.”
Republican skepticism: Mr. Cassidy, a physician and ardent proponent of vaccines who is facing a primary challenge at home, posted an open letter on social media on Friday calling on Mr. Kennedy to encourage vaccination in the wake of a whooping cough outbreak in his state. Two other Republican senators, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Barrasso of Wyoming, have also criticized Mr. Kennedy for the sudden removal of Dr. Monarez, an infectious disease researcher and longtime government scientist. But during the hearing, several expressed skepticism of the C.D.C.’s vaccination schedule and whether all the recommendations were backed by rigorous science.
Kennedy’s response: A spokesman for Mr. Kennedy, Andrew Nixon, said that Dr. Monarez had been fired because she “acted maliciously to undermine the president’s agenda” and that the health secretary “is focused on restoring public trust in the C.D.C. by ensuring transparency, accountability and diverse scientific input.
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