The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in critical condition. This year, the premier public health agency had its funding brutally cut and staff gutted, its mission sabotaged, and its headquarters riddled with literal bullets. The over 500 rounds fired were meant for its scientists and public health experts, who endured only to be sidelined, ignored, and overruled by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist hellbent on warping the agency to fit his anti-science agenda.
Then, on August 27, Kennedy fired CDC Director Susan Monarez just weeks after she was confirmed by the Senate. She had refused to blindly approve vaccine recommendations from a panel of vaccine skeptics and contrarians that he had hand-selected. The agency descended into chaos, and Monarez wasn’t the only one to leave the agency that day.
Three top leaders had reached their breaking point and coordinated their resignations upon the dramatic ouster: Drs. Demetre Daskalakis, Debra Houry, and Daniel Jernigan walked out of the agency as their colleagues rallied around them.
Dr. Daskalakis was the director of the CDC National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. He managed national responses to mpox, measles, seasonal flu, bird flu, COVID-19, and RSV.
Dr. Houry was the medical officer and deputy director for Program and Science, who oversaw nine centers and the Office of Science at the agency, which had a combined budget of over $6 billion. She was the agency’s most senior leader after the director.
Dr. Daniel Jernigan was the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. He had worked at the CDC for over 30 years. He led responses to dozens of health crises, including Ebola outbreaks and the 2003 SARS pandemic, and had become the national leader in responding to influenza threats.
On Tuesday, these three former officials will join Ars Technica for a discussion on what they saw, and are seeing, at the CDC under Kennedy’s rule and what it means for the country’s health. They’ll provide insight into what exactly is being lost by having ideology, rather than evidence, guide our public health policy—and how we might one day undo the damage.
Tune in Tuesday, December 16, at 2 pm ET at THIS LINK. See you there.
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