Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the former head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on Thursday said Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has not been briefed by agency experts on measles, COVID-19 and the flu.
“No one from my center has ever briefed him on any of those topics,” Daskalakis told Kaitlan Collins during a Thursday evening appearance on CNN’s “The Source.”
“Perhaps he has alternate experts that he may trust more than the experts at CDC that the rest of the world regards as the best scientists in the areas,” he added.
The Hill has contacted HHS for comment.
Daskalakis resigned from his post on Wednesday following the Trump administration’s dismissal of CDC Director Susan Monarez, whom the White House said did not “align” with the president’s agenda.
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He, alongside several other officials, decried new agency policies, saying decision-making was based on a political agenda rather than on scientific evidence.
The former CDC official said Kennedy is receiving information from “somewhere,” but he has not come to CDC experts for advice on various infectious diseases, despite a recent measles outbreak that infected hundreds in states across the country.
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“He’s getting information from somewhere, but that information is not coming from CDC experts who really are the world’s experts in this area […] and he’s not taking us up on several offers to brief him on these very important topics,” Daskalakis said.
His claims echo those included in his resignation letter, in which he wrote: “We are seven months into the new administration, and no CDC subject matter expert from my Center has ever briefed the Secretary. I am not sure who the Secretary is listening to, but it is quite certainly not to us.”
Kennedy was widely known as a vaccine critic prior to his Senate confirmation hearing, stirring controversy surrounding his fitness to serve at the helm of a department dedicated to ensuring public health.
In recent months, the secretary has fired members of a committee dedicated to providing CDC officials with recommendations to improve standing immunizations and replaced them with individuals who promote anti-vaccine rhetoric.
