US public health chief ousted weeks into job
NEW YORK—The director of the nation’s top public health agency is out after less than one month in the job, and several top agency leaders have resigned.
“Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people,” the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wrote in a social media post on Wednesday.
HHS officials did not explain why Monarez was no longer with the agency.
‘Silencing of experts’
On Wednesday evening, her lawyers Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell issued a statement that said she had neither resigned nor been told she was fired.
“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted,” the attorneys wrote.
“This is not about one official. It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science. The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within,” they said.
Her departure coincided with the resignations of at least three top CDC officials. The list includes Dr. Debra Houry, the agency’s deputy director; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, head of the agency’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, head of its National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
In an email seen by an Associated Press (AP) reporter, Houry lamented the crippling effects on the agency from planned budget cuts, reorganization plans and firings.
“I am committed to protecting the public’s health, but the ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency,” she wrote.
She also noted the rise of misinformation about vaccines during the current Trump administration, and alluded to new limits on CDC communications.
No to censorship
“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations,” she wrote.
In his resignation letter, Daskalakis wrote: “I am 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.”
