The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) former chief medical officer on Thursday said her resignation was spurred by the Trump administration’s decision to oust Director Susan Monarez, describing it as a last straw.
Debra Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer, also said three other CDC officials who resigned on Wednesday did so after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushed out Monarez.
“We were going to see if she was able to weather the storm. And when she was not, we were done,” Houry told The Associated Press.
She and the other senior officials announced their exit from CDC leadership roles as the Trump administration grapples with mass firings and widespread criticism over misinformation tied to vaccines.
Kennedy on Thursday said the agency needed to be fixed as he defended his role in the resignations. He also said the CDC, which has been at the center of a battle over vaccines, needed to get on board with the Trump administration’s policies.
During a Thursday interview on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends,” Kennedy said he would take a deeper look at possible “malaise” at the CDC agency.
He told the outlet, “We need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump’s broad ambitions.”
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the former head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases who was among the officials who resigned on Wednesday, said the secretary is challenging factual scientific narratives.
“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 wrote in his resignation letter, which was posted to the social platform X.
“The recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people,” he added.
Daskalakis also noted that “major policy changes without prior notice demonstrate a disregard of normal communication channels and common sense. “
