By
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he plans to make changes to the childhood immunization schedule in September, according to the ousted director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Monarez. Monarez detailed the conversation Wednesday at a hearing of the Senate health committee focused on the recent turmoil inside the CDC.
“He said that the childhood vaccine schedule would be changing starting in September, and I needed to be on board with it,” Monarez said, answering a question from the committee chairman, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. Monarez said that Kennedy offered no science or data to support a change in the schedule and that she refused to go along.
To secure his nomination in January, Kennedy assured Cassidy he would not change the childhood vaccine schedule.
Monarez testified that Kennedy “was very upset” about her refusal and that he was “extremely animated towards me in that room.” She said he responded with accusations against the CDC and doctors.
“He said that CDC employees were killing children and they don’t care. He said that CDC employees were bought by the pharmaceutical industry. He said CDC forced people to wear masks and social distance like a dictatorship,” she said. “He said, during the Covid outbreak, CDC told hospitals to turn away sick Covid patients until they had blue lips before allowing them to get treatment.”
“Those statements are not true,” she added.
Monarez also described a pervasive fear within the agency after a shooting in August in which a gunman who blamed vaccines for his health problems shot hundreds of rounds at the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters, killing a police officer.
“Each bullet was meant for a person, and each of my staff were very traumatized afterwards,” Monarez said. Some of her staff refused to speak about vaccines and removed their names from research for fear of being targeted, she said.
Monarez and Dr. Deb Houry, the agency’s former chief medical officer, both testified that scientific decisions around vaccines and other issues at the agency — which have traditionally been made by scientists based on data — are now being decided by Kennedy’s political staff. Houry named Kennedy’s aide Stuart Burns as the political staffer who has helped shape the agenda for the federal panels that recommend vaccines. Before joining Kennedy at the Department of Health and Human Services, Burns was a longtime staffer for congressional Republicans and was well known as a key government ally to the anti-vaccine movement.
Monarez also said Kennedy asked her to meet with anti-vaccine lawyer Aaron Siri.
A longtime colleague and friend of Kennedy in the anti-vaccine movement who acted as Kennedy’s personal lawyer during his failed presidential campaign, Siri has made millions in lawsuits against vaccines, challenging mandates in states and representing clients who claim vaccine injuries. He once petitioned the federal government to revoke approval for a polio vaccine.
During his opening remarks, Cassidy said the hearing would focus on answering why Kennedy had fired Monarez less than a month after saying at her swearing-in that she had “unimpeachable scientific credentials.”
Houry also testified about resigning in protest weeks ago, along with two other senior officials. In her opening remarks, Houry said she resigned because Kennedy had “censored CDC science, politicized its processes and stripped leaders of independence.”
“I could not, in good conscience, remain under those conditions,” she said.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for HHS, said Monarez had been fired because she “acted maliciously to undermine the president’s agenda.”
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is convening Thursday for a two-day meeting where it plans to discuss the vaccine schedule. Kennedy fired the previous experts on that panel in June and has filled the panel with vaccine critics who lack expertise.
Nixon said that meeting “will decide the outcome” of the childhood vaccine schedule. “Any potential changes to the childhood vaccine schedule will be based on the latest available science, and only after the ACIP recommends it and the acting CDC director reviews and approves those recommendations.”