Nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sounded an alarm on Monday in a rare op-ed decrying Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s shake-up of the public health agency.
The group, which served under both Democratic and Republican administrations stretching back to 1977, wrote that he is “endangering” the lives of everyday Americans who rely on the CDC for unbiased scientific information.
“What [RFK Jr.] has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced,” the group wrote in The New York Times.