Former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra on Wednesday lamented the resignations of four senior leaders at the Center for Disease Control (CDC), warning of major concerns for public health.
“I worked alongside the three leading scientists at the CDC who resigned tonight,” Becerra, who served in the Biden administration, wrote in a statement on social platform X.
“They were essential public health leaders who helped our country get out of the pandemic,” he continued. “Politicians don’t do science well. It is dangerous to put politics over public health. People will die.”
The departures of the health policy leaders —including Deputy Director Debra Houry and Doctors Daniel Jernigan, Demete Daskalakis and Jennifer Layden — came after CDC Director Susan Monarez was terminated after refusing to resign following tension with current HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, according to White House officials.
Monarez’s exit from the agency comes less than a month after she was confirmed to the position by the Senate. Her lawyers have pushed back on the firing.
“This is not about one official. It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science,” attorneys Abe Lowell and Mark Zaid said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press. “The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within.”
Her lawyers argued she was being reprimanded for refusing to adjust vaccine policy to fit President Trump’s health agenda.
HHS earlier this year sparked controversy after Kennedy seemingly dismantled the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and revamped the panel, which provides vaccine recommendations. He replaced the members with COVID-19 contrarians.
“Public health is not merely about the health of the individual, but it is about the health of the community, the nation, the world,” Daskalakis, who also served as an adviser to the White House under Biden, wrote in his resignation letter posted on X.
“The nation’s health security is at risk and is in the hands of people focusing on ideological self-interest,” he added.
Becerra said the departures are increasingly alarming as more infectious diseases are bound to emerge in the coming years.
“When the CDC doesn’t get it right, a lot of people die. And when you lose your brain talent, a lot of people are going to die,” he said in the video accompanying his X post. “Something will come around the corner, whether it’s COVID, whether it’s avian flu, and we need the experts.”
He added later, “We’re in trouble.”
