The administration of United States President Donald Trump is expected to install Jim O’Neill as acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), replacing a director who clashed with the White House over policies that defy scientific evidence.
O’Neill is currently deputy to Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Sources close to CDC Director Susan Monarez have told news agencies that she butted heads with Kennedy over questions of misinformation and vaccine policy.
“She said that there were two things she would never do in the job. One was anything that was deemed illegal, and the second was anything that she felt flew in the face of science, and she said she was asked to do both of those,” Richard Besser, former acting director of the CDC, told reporters.
Several high-level CDC officials resigned from their positions in solidarity with Monarez and in defiance of what they depicted as the undermining of scientific expertise as a basis of public health policy.
Monarez said that she refused to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts”. She had been in her job for less than a month.
Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccination activist before joining the Trump administration, has moved to reshape the agency and expel advisers who do not align with his views. He purged a vaccine advisory board of its members in June, moving to replace them with individuals who share views closer to his own.
Speaking on the TV programme Fox and Friends, Kennedy portrayed the CDC as an institute in dire need of reform.
“The CDC has problems,” Kennedy said, accusing the centres of spreading COVID-19 “misinformation” after it advised mask wearing and social distancing. While he did not mention Monarez by name, he argued the CDC’s culture was due for a change.
At the White House news briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the sentiment that the CDC director had to be loyal to Trump’s agenda.
“Her lawyer’s statement made it abundantly clear themselves that she was not aligned with the president’s mission to make America healthy again,” Leavitt said.
Scientists and doctors who worked closely with Monarez said recent changes at the CDC undermined the agency’s mission to protect the public from health threats.
One top CDC leader who resigned, Demetre Daskalakis, warned that the agency’s new direction under Trump portended real risks to public health.
“I’m a doctor. I took the Hippocratic oath that said, ‘First, do no harm.’ I believe harm is going to happen, and so I can’t be a part of it,” said Daskalakis, the former director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
A union representing CDC employees, AFGE Local 2883, said in a statement that the agency’s leadership had contributed to a climate of hostility and mistrust.
The group Fired But Fighting, composed of laid-off employees, condemned Kennedy for “his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety, which have fueled a climate of hostility and mistrust”.
As the CDC continues to winnow down its workforce, employees also issued an open letter to Kennedy, accusing him of “terminating critical CDC workers in a destroy-first-and-ask-questions-later manner”.
The installation of Jim O’Neill as acting head of the CDC has raised concerns about the agency’s future direction and its commitment to scientific evidence-based public health policy.
The controversy surrounding Monarez’s departure and the resignations of several high-level CDC officials highlight the tensions between the Trump administration and the scientific community.
As the CDC navigates these challenges, the public health implications of the agency’s new direction remain a significant concern.
The CDC’s mission to protect the public from health threats is critical, and any undermining of its scientific expertise and evidence-based policy-making could have far-reaching consequences for public health.