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centers for disease control and prevention
'Endangering Every American's Health': 9 Former CDC Chiefs Sound Alarm on RFK Jr.
Their "astonishing, powerful op-ed," said one professor, "drives home what we are losing and what's already been lost."
Sep 01, 2025
Nearly every living former director or acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from the past half-century took to the pages of The New York Times on Monday to jointly argue that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "is endangering every American's health."
"Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the CDC, the world's preeminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations," Drs. William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle Walensky, and Mandy Cohen highlighted.
What RFK Jr. "has done to the CDC and to our nation's public health system over the past several months—culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as CDC director days ago—is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced," the nine former agency leaders wrote.
Known for spreading misinformation about vaccines and a series of scandals, Kennedy was a controversial figure long before President Donald Trump chose him to lead HHS—a decision that Senate Republicans affirmed in February. However, in the wake of Monarez's ouster, fresh calls for him to resign or be fired have mounted.
This is powerful. Nine former CDC leaders just came together to defend SCIENCE.Maybe it’s time we LISTEN TO THEM—not the loud voices spreading MISINFORMATION.Science saves lives. Lies cost themwww.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
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— Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA (@krutikakuppalli.bsky.social) September 1, 2025 at 10:35 AM
As the ex-directors detailed:
Secretary Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence, and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he's focused on unproven "treatments" while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill-prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of US support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez—which led to the resignations of top CDC officials—adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.
Monarez was nominated by Trump, and was confirmed by Senate Republicans in late July. As the op-ed authors noted, she was forced out by RFK Jr. just weeks later, after she reportedly refused "to rubber-stamp his dangerous and unfounded vaccine recommendations or heed his demand to fire senior CDC staff members."
"These are not typical requests from a health secretary to a CDC director," they wrote. "Not even close. None of us would have agreed to the secretary's demands, and we applaud Dr. Monarez for standing up for the agency and the health of our communities."
After Monarez's exit, Trump tapped Jim O'Neill, an RFK Jr. aide and biotech investor, as the CDC's interim director. Critics including Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's health research group, warn that "unlike Susan Monarez, O'Neill is likely to rubber-stamp dangerous vaccine recommendations from HHS Secretary Kennedy's handpicked appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and obey orders to fire CDC public health experts with scientific integrity."
The agency's former directors didn't address O'Neill, but they wrote: "To those on the CDC staff who continue to perform their jobs heroically in the face of the excruciating circumstances, we offer our sincere thanks and appreciation. Their ongoing dedication is a model for all of us. But it's clear that the agency is hurting badly."
"We have a message for the rest of the nation as well: This is a time to rally to protect the health of every American," they continued. The experts called on Congress to "exercise its oversight authority over HHS," and state and local governments to "fill funding gaps where they can." They also urged philanthropy, the private sector, medical groups, and physicians to boost investments, "continue to stand up for science and truth," and support patients "with sound guidance and empathy."
Doctors, researchers, journalists, and others called their "must-read" piece "extraordinary" and "important."
"Just an astonishing, powerful op-ed that drives home what we are losing and what's already been lost," said University of Michigan Law School professor Leah Litman. "We are so incredibly fortunate to live with the advances [of] modern medicine and health science. Destroying and stymying it is just unforgivable."
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'No More Conspiracy Theories. Kennedy Must Resign,' Says Sanders Amid CDC Fallout
Make America Healthy Again is "a great slogan," the senator wrote. "The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite."
Aug 30, 2025
"Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign."
That's how US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) began a New York Times op-ed on Saturday, amid mounting calls for Kennedy to leave the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), by choice or force, following the ouster of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez.
As Sanders detailed in the Times—and a Thursday letter to Senate HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) demanding a congressional probe—Monarez was fired after reportedly refusing to "act as a rubber stamp for his dangerous policies." Her exit led to resignations and a staff walkout at the CDC, which is now being led by Jim O'Neill, a Kennedy aide and biotech investor.
Sanders and other lawmakers—including former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a polio survivor and the only Republican to vote against Kennedy's confirmation in February—have long warned about the consequences of letting RFK Jr. hold a key health policy position in President Donald Trump's second administration.
"Mr. Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again," Sanders noted Saturday. "That's a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite."
"Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, Secretary Kennedy has continued his long-standing crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts," the senator wrote. "It is absurd to have to say this in 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective. That, of course, is not just my view. Far more important, it is the overwhelming consensus of the medical and scientific communities."
Sanders pointed to guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and World Health Organization, and called out Kennedy's comments on autism, Covid-19 and polio vaccines, and immunizations in general.
"The reality is that Secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of HHS, he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health, and on truth itself," he wrote, warning that in the "short term, it will be harder for Americans to get lifesaving vaccines," including for Covid.
However, "Covid is just the beginning. Mr. Kennedy's next target may be the childhood immunization schedule, the list of recommended vaccines that children receive to protect them from diseases like measles, chickenpox. and polio," the senator continued. He also sounded the alarm over the secretary "defunding the research that could help us prepare for the next pandemic."
Sanders, a leading advocate of Medicare for All, also took aim at the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed last month.
"America's healthcare system is already dysfunctional and wildly expensive, and yet the Trump administration will be throwing an estimated 15 million people off their health insurance through a cut of over $1 trillion to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act," he noted. "This cut is also expected to result in the closing of or the decline in services at hundreds of nursing homes, hospitals, and community health centers. As a result of cuts to the Affordable Care Act, health insurance costs will soar for millions of Americans. That is not Making America Healthy Again."
"Secretary Kennedy is putting Americans' lives in danger, and he must resign," Sanders concluded. "In his place, President Trump must listen to doctors and scientists and nominate a health secretary and a CDC director who will protect the health and well-being of the American people, not carry out dangerous policies based on conspiracy theories."
Bernie Sanders is right—RFK Jr. must resign. His leadership is an assault on science, public health, and truth. We’re not just talking politics; we’re talking lives. #ResignKennedy #ScienceFirst”www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/o...
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— Elizabeth (@elizathewell.bsky.social) August 30, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Doctors, journalists, and others praised the senator's op-ed, with Trauma surgeon Mark Hoofnagle saying that "Bernie nails it."
Pennsylvania State University professor and A Desire Called America author Christian Haines wrote on the social media platform Bluesky that the piece was "clear and incisive, though I wish it didn't need to be said."
Also sharing the post on Bluesky, former Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse said: "It's delusional for anyone to think that RFK Jr. and Donald Trump are making America healthy again. With Kennedy's war against science, truth, and vaccines and Trump's war against Medicaid, their movement should be called MAKING AMERICA UNHEALTHY AGAIN."
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Trump Taps 'Manifestly Unqualified' Peter Thiel Protégé as Acting CDC Director After RFK's Purge
A health researcher for Public Citizen said Trump's interim CDC director has "no medical or public health background and extremist libertarian views."
Aug 29, 2025
After pushing out his own handpicked Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director, infectious disease expert Susan Monarez, fueling a wave of outraged resignations this week, US President Donald Trump has appointed a loyal acolyte to replace her at Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s side.
On Thursday, the president tapped one of RFK's top aides as interim CDC director: biotech investor Jim O'Neill, a man with no medical experience but extensive experience profiting from healthcare while working at billionaire GOP megadonor Peter Thiel's venture capital firm, Mithril Capital.
Unlike his predecessor, whose ouster came as she tried to push back against RFK's anti-vaccine agenda, O'Neill fits snugly into the secretary's efforts to restrict access to the Covid-19 vaccine, and potentially ban it outright, as the Daily Beast reported earlier this week.
"A tech investor with no medical or public health background and extremist libertarian views, Jim O'Neill was unfit for the number two position at HHS and manifestly unqualified to lead the CDC," said Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's health research group, on Friday.
Just as Kennedy did during his confirmation hearings, O'Neill insisted he was "pro-vaccine," noting that he was "an adviser to a vaccine company." However, this is belied by his record on the subject.
He has championed unproven cures like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and vitamin D supplements to protect against Covid-19, and has accused the CDC under the administration of former President Joe Biden of downplaying the vaccine's dangers while railing against mandates.
O'Neill has also praised Kennedy's response to the measles outbreak that swept across the US earlier this year, during which the secretary downplayed the severity and cast unfounded doubt on the effectiveness and safety of the measles vaccine that had virtually eradicated the disease before vaccination rates began to decline.
"Unlike Susan Monarez," Steinbrook said, "O'Neill is likely to rubber-stamp dangerous vaccine recommendations from HHS Secretary Kennedy's handpicked appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and obey orders to fire CDC public health experts with scientific integrity."
O'Neill melds medical crankery with a Thielite strain of anarcho-libertarianism. He has served on the board of the Seasteading Institute, an organization founded by Patri Friedman, the grandson of the right-wing economist Milton Friedman, who advocates for corporations like Apple and Google to form their own floating cities at sea, which would be governed as corporate "dictatorships" free from the constraints of democratic governance.
That anti-government ethos extends to his views on the healthcare system, which O'Neill says is flawed not because of the rampant profiteering of the private companies that run it, but because it is supposedly not "free market" enough.
In 2014, he advocated for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin approving drugs for the market without conducting clinical trials to determine their effectiveness. "Let people start using them, at their own risk," he argued, "Let's prove efficacy after they've been legalized."
He has also argued for the government to allow people to sell their own internal organs. This process often results in deteriorating health for the disproportionately poor people who partake.
While working at HHS under the administration of former President George W. Bush, O'Neill also opposed the FDA regulation of companies that use algorithms to perform laboratory tests.
At the time, he was focused on DNA testing products like 23andMe, but a report from the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen says that "a decade after he made this remark, it's clear how dangerous such a concept is," noting that "with the development and proliferation of artificial intelligence, algorithms are omnipresent in the practice of medicine, including in diagnostic tools, medical devices, AI assistants to doctors, and personalized medicine."
In addition to Thiel's ideology, he reportedly brings several conflicts of interest to the CDC director job from his time working at Thiel's venture capital firm.
Accountable.US reported Friday that O'Neill "took money from, helped incubate, or was otherwise linked to at least eight medical industry startups with direct business before the department he could help run."
These include firms he advised, like the pharmaceutical company ADvantage Therapeutics or the National Institutes of Health grantee Rational Vaccines, which manufactures herpes drugs.
It also includes four companies seeded by his Thiel-affiliated venture capital firm Breakout Labs, some of which have received government funding or have products awaiting FDA approval.
Though O'Neill agreed to divest from some of these companies and abstain from involvement in decision-making with them as part of his ethics agreement, the report notes that "he did not promise to abstain from decisions involving these companies for the duration of his term, or to abstain from doing business with them after departing HHS."
"O'Neill would be in a prime position to ensure favorable outcomes for several medical industry startups he's been financially linked to that have direct business before HHS and the CDC," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk. "How can American patients be sure that proper vetting of these companies would take place on O'Neill's watch and that public health will be a higher priority over the profits of his former clients?"
Though Steinbrook describes O'Neill as "manifestly unqualified" for the position, he said, "No credible public health authority is likely to work for Kennedy, who is dictating the agency's decisions based on whim, not science."
"The only path forward," Steinbrook said, "is for Kennedy to go, which Congress, professional organizations, medical journals, and the public should demand."
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