Susan Monarez made it a little more than three weeks in the top job at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The longtime government scientist was pushed out of the agency on Wednesday, with the Washington Post reporting that her tenure came to an end over disagreements with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine policy.
The outlet’s sources say that Kennedy pressed Monarez for days about her potential support for limiting the pool of Americans who are eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines. The Post shared that Monarez recruited Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a former physician, to ask Kennedy to reconsider. The outlet’s sources said Monarez was given the option to resign or be fired.
On the same day the news broke that Monarez was out at the CDC, Kennedy revealed new limits on who could receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Several senior-level CDC officials followed Monarez out the door. In resignation letters, they criticized the censorship of the administration and a lack of communication from leadership.
CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry defended vaccinations in a letter to staff that was shared by CNN.
“Vaccines save lives – this is an indisputable, well-established scientific fact,” she said. “Informed consent and shared decision-making must focus not only on the risks, but also on the true lifesaving benefits that vaccines provide to individuals and communities.”
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, shared his resignation letter in a post to X. Daskalakis said that Kennedy’s “views…challenge my ability to continue in my current role at the agency and in the service of the health of the American people.”
“Enough is enough,” he wrote. “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.”
