The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be headed by American President Donald Trump in his place, replacing a director who had a history of conflict with the White House over policies that defy scientific evidence.
O’Neill’s selection came after Trump officials claimed they fired CDC Director Susan Monarez, according to reports from The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
O’Neill serves in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
During discussions of misinformation and vaccine policy, Monarez and Kennedy had conversations, according to sources close to Monarez.
She stated that she would never do two things while working. She claimed that she was asked to do both of those things, according to Richard Besser, former CDC acting director, and that one was anything that she thought was unlawful. The other was what she thought she was supposed to be doing.
In protest of what they perceived as the undermining of scientific expertise as the foundation of public health policy, several senior CDC officials resigned from their positions.
Monarez alleged that she would not “rubber-stamp unreliable, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.” She had only worked for a short while.
Before joining the Trump administration, Kennedy, a well-known anti-vaccination activist, has made a move to reform the organization and fire advisors who disagree with his positions.
In June, he removed the members of the vaccine advisory board and replaced them with those with views that are more similar to his own.
Kennedy described the CDC as a terribly flawed institution in a statement on Fox and Friends on Thursday.
According to Kennedy, “the CDC has problems,” and it has accused the centers of spreading “misinformation” about COVID-19 after it recommended wearing masks and engaging in social distancing.
He claimed that the CDC’s culture needed to change, even though he did not name Monarez.
The agency is in trouble, and we need to fix it, and we are fixing it, even though I can’t comment on personnel issues. And he speculated that some employees should stop working there.
We require strong leaders who can pursue President Trump’s broad goals.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared the impression that the CDC director had to adhere to Trump’s agenda at Thursday’s White House press briefing.
According to Leavitt, “Her lawyer’s statement made it abundantly clear that she was not in line with the president’s desire to restore health.”
Additionally, she provided a White House account of how Monarez allegedly got fired.
“Kennedy] asked her to resign,” she said. She said she would, but she later said she wouldn’t. Therefore, Leavitt claimed that the president should have fired her, which he has the right to do. “President Trump won a resounding majority of the way back on November 5th. This woman has never been able to vote in her entire life.
However, Monarez’s team of scientists and doctors claimed that the CDC’s recent changes had undermined its goal to protect the public from health risks.
Demetre Daskalakis, a senior CDC official who resigned this week, warned that the agency’s new direction, under Trump, would present real risks to public health.
“I’m a doctor,” I say. First, do no harm, according to the Hippocratic oath I took. Former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Daskalakis, said, “I don’t want to be a part of it because I think harm will happen.”
After a gunman attacked the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, sparking heightened angst within the organization over the past few weeks as he blamed COVID-19 vaccines for his health issues.
One police officer was killed in that shooting, and the suspect committed suicide.
Kennedy has blatantly referred to the COVID-19 vaccine as the “deadliest vaccine ever created.”
The CDC’s employees’ representatives criticized Kennedy for causing the public to distrust the health agency following the shooting.
A union representing CDC employees, AFGE Local 2883, stated in a statement that “this tragedy was not random, and it compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured.”
Meanwhile, the organization Fired But Fighting, which is made up of fired employees, criticizes Kennedy for “his ongoing lies about science and vaccine safety, which have created a climate of hostility and mistrust.”
Source: Aljazeera
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