CDC director ousted, top leaders resign

Dr. Susan Monarez is out as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after clashing with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, several news outlets reported Wednesday, August 28. At least three high-level agency officials have resigned in protest, including Dr. Demetre Daskalakis.

Most recently director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Daskalakis was previously director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. A gay leatherman, he has received acclaim for his intimate connection to the communities he serves.

“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,” Daskalakis wrote in a resignation letter posted to the social media platform X. “Having worked in local and national public health for years, I have never experienced such radical non-transparency, nor have I seen such unskilled manipulation of data to achieve a political end rather than the good of the American people.”

The HHS X account announced Wednesday evening that Monarez “is no longer director” of the nation’s premier public health agency. Named acting director in January, Monarez was sworn in to the top post on July 31, just a week before a shooting at the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta left a police officer dead and staffers traumatized.

Soon after the announcement, Monarez’s attorneys, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell, took to social media to say that she had not yet resigned or been fired, accusing Kennedy of “weaponizing public health for political gain.”

“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted,” they wrote.

The attorneys argued that as a presidential appointee and the first CDC director to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, only the president could fire Monarez, but later that night, the White House confirmed that Monarez has indeed been terminated, the Washington Post reported.

“As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again,” White House spokesman Kush Desai stated in an email. In a Thursday appearance on Fox News , Kennedy declined to address Monarez’s firing directly but repeated his concerns about the CDC’s handling of COVID.

 
Citing anonymous agency sources, news reports suggested that Monarez has increasingly been at odds with Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic. Kennedy launched a study in March to examine the link between vaccines and autism, a hypothesis discredited by extensive prior research. In June, he removed all members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing them with ideological allies. In May, he announced that COVID-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children or pregnant women. Earlier Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved updated COVID boosters from Moderna, Pfizer, and Novavax, but only for people over 65 and those at risk for severe illness.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) condemned what he called the “reckless” and “dangerous” decision to oust Monarez and the resignation of other senior CDC leaders.

“We need leaders at the CDC and HHS who are committed to improving public health and have the courage to stand up for science, not officials who have a history of spreading bogus conspiracy theories and disinformation,” Sanders said in a statement .

Other CDC leaders resign
Monarez’s ouster prompted the resignation of agency leaders including Daskalakis, CDC chief medical officer Dr. Debra Houry, and Dr. Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Dr. Jennifer Layden, head of the CDC’s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology, will also leave the agency, Politico reported .

“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations,” Houry wrote in a letter to colleagues obtained by Inside Medicine .

In his blistering resignation letter, Daskalakis criticized Kennedy and other Trump administration health officials, citing “disregard of normal communication channels and common sense” as well as hostility toward the queer and HIV communities.

“For decades, I have been a trusted voice for the LGBTQ community when it comes to critical health topics. I must also cite the recklessness of the administration in their efforts to erase transgender populations, cease critical domestic and international HIV programming and terminate key research to support equity as part of my decision,” he wrote. “Public health is not merely about the health of the individual, but it is about the health of the community, the nation, the world. The nation’s health security is at risk and is in the hands of people focusing on ideological self-interest.”

Public health leaders, clinicians and advocates expressed dismay over the CDC departures and fears about the agency’s future.

“The mass resignations of CDC expert leaders present a clear and present danger to Americans of all ages and leave our nation extremely vulnerable to a wide range of public health threats from outbreaks to bioterror attacks,” Infectious Diseases Society of America President Dr. Tina Tan said in a statement . “The administration’s current trajectory for destroying the public health system is reckless and cannot continue.”

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights organization, singled out Daskalakis’ work for praise.

“For eight months, the LGBTQ+ community has watched as the Trump administration, and HHS Secretary Kennedy, has taken a blowtorch to the public health framework that has helped improve our health outcomes over the past decades. The recent firings and resignations of some of the nation’s top medical leaders is an urgent wake-up call for America’s public health. This is a five-alarm fire,” HRC senior public policy advocate Matt Rose said in a statement .

“Dr. Demetre Daskalakis became a widely recognized voice for LGBTQ+ community health through a lifetime of service, especially on ending the HIV epidemic and, most recently, through his tailored outreach during the mpox outbreak a few years ago,” Rose continued. “His work helped people stay safe and healthy, while recognizing the dignity of their life. He represents the best of what we could ask for from public health officials in times of both crisis and calm.”