Opinion: RFK Jr.’s decisions ‘unacceptable,’ say former CDC directors
Recent decisions made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), are “unacceptable” and “should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings,” according to nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The former CDC chiefs called out RFK Jr.’s leadership in a September 1 opinion piece in the New York Times. The group collectively spent more than 100 years at the CDC working under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and includes four Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health alumni: Rochelle Walensky, MPH ’01, Mandy Cohen, MPH ’04, Jeffrey Koplan, MPH ’78, and William Foege, MPH ’65. Other co-authors included William Roper, David Satcher, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, and Anne Schuchat.
The former CDC directors wrote that RFK Jr.’s actions are “unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.”
Over the past few months, they noted, Kennedy announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs; pushed for legislation that will cause millions of Americans to lose Medicaid coverage; and fired thousands of federal health workers, including CDC director Susan Monarez, after she refused to back what the authors called Kennedy’s “dangerous and unfounded vaccine recommendations.”
The co-authors urged all Americans, regardless of political affiliations, to act against the continued threats to the nation’s health security under RFK Jr.’s HHS leadership. “Congress must exercise its oversight authority over Health and Human Services,” they wrote. “State and local governments must fill funding gaps where they can. Philanthropy and the private sector must step up their community investments. Medical groups must continue to stand up for science and truth. Physicians must continue to support their patients with sound guidance and empathy. And each of us must do what public health does best: look out for one another.”
They added, “This is a time to rally to protect the health of every American.”
Read the New York Times opinion piece: We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health.
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