"Unable to serve": CDC vaccine chief slams Kennedy in resignation post
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Demetre Daskalakis, who was the CDC's director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, at the White House in 2022. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
A CDC official who resigned following the announcement that agency director Susan Monarez had been ousted shared a post Wednesday on why he's stepping down that accused HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of ignoring experts.
Why it matters: Demetre Daskalakis, who was director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on X that recent policy changes threatened lives and there had been an "intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines."
- Daskalakis' post came as Monarez's attorneys said on X in response to an HHS announcement that she was no longer CDC director that she "has neither resigned nor received notification from the White House that she has been fired."
Key takeaways from Daskalakis' post
Driving the news: Daskalakis said he wasn't resigning because of this month's shooting attack on the CDC's Atlanta headquarters, but because of "the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that HIS and his minions' words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur."
- He said he's "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 said the "lack of communication by HHS and other CDC political leadership that culminates in social media posts announcing major policy changes without prior notice demonstrate a disregard of normal communication channels and common sense."
- He added: "I am not sure who the Secretary is listening to, but it is quite certainly not to us. Unvetted and conflicted outside organizations seem to be the sources HHS use over the gold standard science of CDC and other reputable sources."
- Representatives for the HHS and CDC did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.
Zoom in: Daskalakis said the "recent change in the adult and children's immunization schedule threaten[s] the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people" and added he had "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."
- He also raised concerns about changes regarding the COVID vaccine work group that he said put "people of dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor in charge of recommending vaccine policy to a director hamstrung and sidelined by an authoritarian leader."
- Daskalakis said their "desire to please a political base will result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults."
- And Daskalakis claimed eugenics "plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun."
