Stop the Anti-Vaccine Takeover of the CDC

The Trump administration is continuing to undermine public health and scientific integrity by firing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez. Monarez was ousted for refusing to further decimate the CDC’s workforce and rubber stamp anti-vaccination extremists’ misinformation about lifesaving vaccines. Multiple other senior CDC officials left their positions in response to Monarez’s attempted firing, warning of the dire threats posed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attacks on vaccine access and science more broadly.

Kennedy’s campaign against public health and vaccines, which have saved at least 154 million lives over the past 50 years, is a fundamental threat to the health and wellbeing of everyone in the United States. Congress must launch immediate investigations into the politicization of the CDC. They must also demand Kennedy’s resignation and an indefinite hold on further meetings of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a once-prestigious advisory panel now filled with Kennedy’s hand-picked anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.

The CDC’s scientific integrity and access to safe, routine vaccinations are not partisan issues. Congress cannot sit idly by as Kennedy and his cronies decimate our nation’s public health infrastructure.