Hundreds of employees and supporters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lined the sidewalks outside the agency’s Atlanta headquarters Thursday for a “clap out” rally to honor three senior leaders who resigned a day earlier in protest of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine attacks on the agency and public health at large.
Dr. Deb Houry, former deputy director and chief medical officer; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Dr. Daniel Jernigan, former director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, walked through the crowd, hugging former colleagues and accepting bouquets of flowers.
They resigned Wednesday after HHS announced that Kennedy had fired CDC Director Susan Monarez, who had been in her post for less than a month. Monarez’s lawyers disputed her firing, saying that only the president had the authority to fire her and claiming that she had been pushed out for refusing “to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.”
Kennedy defended the firing Thursday on Fox News, citing a nonspecific “deeply embedded malaise at the agency.”
According to reporting in the Washington Post, the White House has tapped HHS deputy secretary Jim O’Neill to serve as Monarez’s interim replacement. O’Neill, who the Post calls a “close ally” of tech investor Peter Thiel, criticized the CDC during the pandemic, but has not echoed Kennedy’s attacks on vaccines. He is expected to lead the agency while continuing to advise HHS.
Houry, Daskalakis and Jernigan — who were escorted off the CDC’s Atlanta campus by security earlier Thursday — gave impromptu speeches in support of their former agency, promising they would continue to fight from the outside.
“We agreed to do this together,” Houry told a reporter at the rally about their coordinated resignations. “If one of us resigned, it would have been a blip. When the three of us do it together, it’s more powerful, and it just shows the state of our agency.”
“We need Congress to intervene,” Houry said. “I hope this is the tipping point.”
Some in Congress are listening. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a doctor who chairs the Senate’s health committee and whom Monarez reportedly contacted Monday with concerns about Kennedy’s demands, called for “oversight” Wednesday night. On Thursday, he said an upcoming vaccine advisory meeting should be canceled. “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,” Cassidy, who was instrumental in approving Kennedy’s nomination, said in a statement.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the ranking member of the Senate health committee, also called for a bipartisan investigation into Monarez’s firing.
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