{"id":12527,"date":"2025-08-29T15:12:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T07:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=12527"},"modified":"2025-08-29T15:12:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T07:12:10","slug":"cdc-crisis-triggered-by-upcoming-vaccine-meeting-leading-to-directors-firing-and-resignations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=12527","title":{"rendered":"CDC crisis triggered by upcoming vaccine meeting, leading to director\u2019s firing and resignations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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An escalating conflict over an influential vaccine committee was one of the final straws that led to the firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and the exodus of other highly regarded top officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had repeatedly undermined the agency\u2019s independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, firing the committee\u2019s members and appointing new members, including vaccine skeptics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early Wednesday, Monarez suggested to Dr. Richard Besser that she was going to be forced to sign off on new vaccine recommendations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe said there were two things she would never do in the job,\u201d said Besser, a former acting CDC director and the CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. \u201cOne, in terms of firing her leadership who are talented civil servants like herself, and the other was to rubber-stamp ACIP recommendations that flew in the face of science.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hours later, Monarez was out, according to a Health and Human Services post on X. Almost immediately, several top officials resigned in protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of those officials, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who directed the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases \u2014 which oversees vaccines \u2014 wrote in his resignation letter that a particular document related to the vaccine committee \u201cignored all feedback from career staff at CDC.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The document was guidance for a newly formed work group that will present Covid vaccine data and research at the upcoming ACIP meeting \u2014 scheduled for September 18 \u2014 and contained anti-vaccine talking points. The work group will be led by newly appointed ACIP member Retsef Levi, an MIT professor who has been vocally against the mRNA Covid vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daskalakis said in an interview that the new group members \u201cwere told that they have the ability to, quote, \u2018prevent CDC bias from entering the work group.\u2019 That\u2019s unheard of. I don\u2019t know what CDC bias is, because that\u2019s not what we do. Our science is unbiased.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee who was a key vote in Kennedy\u2019s confirmation, said in a statement Thursday that the upcoming ACIP meeting should be postponed and called for \u201csignificant oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSerious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting,\u201d Cassidy said.\u201cThese decisions directly impact children\u2019s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted. If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview near the agency\u2019s headquarters in Atlanta on Thursday, Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC\u2019s chief medical officer, who resigned on Wednesday, said, \u201cWe reached our tipping point.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAmerica\u2019s public health is significantly in danger,\u201d Houry said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday afternoon, the White House appointed HHS deputy Jim O\u2019Neill as the new acting CDC director, according to an administration official. The appointment was first reported by The Washington Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hundreds of former and current CDC staffers, other public health workers and private citizens gathered outside the agency\u2019s Atlanta headquarters Thursday to show respect for the officials who resigned. In addition to Daskalakis and Houry, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, also resigned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three made their way through the crowd of people who showed up to hug, applaud and shake their hands. Each spoke to the crowd to express gratitude for their support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are going to be your loudest advocates!\u201d Daskalakis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jernigan, who\u2019d been at the CDC for three decades, said in an interview that he\u2019d been concerned that the administration had questioned the science that had long helped the agency make decisions about treatments and vaccines. \u201cAll of those past findings were being called into question and being reanalyzed in ways that we could not understand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an email to NBC News, one of Monarez\u2019s lawyers, Mark Zaid, said that Monarez was in Washington, D.C., at the time the Department of Health and Human Services announced her firing. Zaid declined to share details on what led up to HHS announcing her firing. He maintains that she \u201cremains\u201d director because the only person with the authority to fire her is President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked whether Monarez would pursue legal action against the Trump administration, Zaid said, \u201cWe\u2019re contemplating every available action but currently our position is she has not been properly or lawfully fired.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether Trump would issue a statement on Monarez\u2019s firing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview on Fox News on Thursday morning, Kennedy said he wouldn\u2019t comment on the Monarez firing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt would be inappropriate for me to comment on a personnel issue,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cWhat I will say is President Trump has very, very ambitious hopes for what, for CDC right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy continued: \u201cThe CDC has problems. You know, we saw the misinformation coming out of Covid. They got the testing wrong. They got the social distancing, the masks, the school closures that did so much harm to the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dispute between the Trump administration and CDC officials has caught the attention of lawmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the ranking member on the HELP committee, urged Cassidy to convene a public hearing to hear testimony from Kennedy, Monarez and the CDC leaders who resigned in the wake of Monarez\u2019s ouster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe American people should hear directly from Secretary Kennedy and Dr. Monarez and every member of our committee should be able to ask questions and get honest answers from them,\u201d Sanders said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday, Kennedy announced the Food and Drug Administration would limit the availability of Covid vaccines for the fall to adults at least 65 years old or people with underlying health conditions \u2014 a decision that upset some public health experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On MSNBC Thursday, Houry said that Monarez \u201cwas not allowed\u201d to make updates and scientific improvements to vaccine work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said she became \u201cconcerned when Dr. Monarez was called to the secretary\u2019s office after trying to\u201d make changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Houry criticized Kennedy\u2019s lack of visibility at the agency. When asked about his criticism of the culture at the agency, she said, \u201cThe CDC scientists are top-notch and excellent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we would actually have preferred was to have more interactions with the health secretary,\u201d she said. Senior leaders \u201cnever were able to brief the secretary\u201d on any of the issues the CDC deals with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An escalating conflict over an influential vaccine committee was one of the final straws that led to the firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and the exodus of other highly regarded top officials. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had repeatedly undermined the agency\u2019s independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":12528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2654,1801,3595],"class_list":["post-12527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-cdc","tag-crisis","tag-triggered"],"yoast_head":"\nCDC crisis triggered by upcoming vaccine meeting, leading to director\u2019s firing and resignations - LISTEN WORLD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=12527\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CDC crisis triggered by upcoming vaccine meeting, leading to director\u2019s firing and resignations - LISTEN WORLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An escalating conflict over an influential vaccine committee was one of the final straws that led to the firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and the exodus of other highly regarded top officials. 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