Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president of the United States, has been accused of putting lives at risk by disobeying decades of life-saving science and reversing medical progress in a letter to him.
In a joint statement released on Wednesday, the organizations, including the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Public Health Association, and the American Association of Immunologists, said that Kennedy is pressuring Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) experts to “turn their back on decades of sound science” in order to advance his agenda.
The organizations also accused Kennedy of making repeated attempts to denigrate science and public health, leaving Americans “less safe” in a variety of ways.
Our nation requires “leadership that encourages open, honest dialogue,” promotes misinformation, reverses medical progress, and decimates programs that protect us, according to the statement.
We are “deeply concerned” that policies that reject sound interventions will cause Americans to suffer and perish without cause.
Following his firing of Susan Monarez, the agency’s director, less than a month after she was sworn in, several former CDC directors last week claimed Kennedy’s decisions are putting Americans’ health at risk.
Kush Desai, a deputy press secretary for the White House, claimed Monarez’s actions did not “align with” President Donald Trump’s agenda and that she had resigned.
According to Monarez’s attorneys, she had been targeted because she “refused to rubber-stamp unreliable, reckless directives and fire devoted health experts.”
In response to Kennedy’s influence over the organization, her departure occurred as well as the resignations of at least four other senior CDC officials.
Kennedy stated in a social media post on Wednesday that his goal is to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease” and to “rebuild trust through competence and transparency.”
Since being appointed by Trump, Kennedy, who has long been accused of spreading anti-vaccine misinformation, has significantly altered US vaccine regulations, which has sparked conflict with health officials.
He withdrew federal advice in May for pregnant women and young children receiving COVID shots. Additionally, he removed all of the experts’ vaccine advisory panel from the CDC in June, replacing them with hand-picked advisers, including fellow anti-vaccine activists, in their place.
In a move that health experts said could increase the US’s vulnerability to upcoming outbreaks of respiratory viruses, he then abruptly ended nearly $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research in August.
Kennedy stated that the US will support “safer” and “maintenance effective” mRNA development technologies for other vaccine development technologies.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s International Vaccine Access Center claims that the cutting-edge technology has the potential to treat diseases like cancer and HIV and that millions of people have died from COVID-19.
On August 20, hundreds of federal health employees wrote to Kennedy to demand that he stop “propagating false health information” and that he either resign or be fired.
Source: Aljazeera
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