More than 1,000 past and present employees of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have called for the resignation of health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, accusing him of endangering public health with repeated attacks on vaccines.
In a letter published on Wednesday, the group said Kennedy’s leadership had caused turmoil at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), citing the dismissal of its director, Susan Monarez, and her replacement by a Trump loyalist with no scientific background.
The letter, issued under the banner Save HHS and co-signed by six medical organisations, accused Kennedy of “endangering the nation’s health by spreading inaccurate health information”. It followed a New York Times opinion piece earlier this week by nine former CDC officials who described Monarez’s ousting as “unacceptable” and without precedent.
The letter lists the resignations of senior health figures including Demetre Daskalakis, head of the CDC’s immunisation division; Daniel Jernigan, director for emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases; and Debra Houry, the agency’s chief medical officer. It also condemns Kennedy’s appointment of “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts” to senior posts, including to a vaccine advisory panel where some members have promoted discredited theories linking vaccines to autism.
The controversy comes after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) restricted access to updated Covid-19 vaccines, prompting Kennedy to claim online that Biden-era mandates had been rescinded and that jabs would now be available only to those most at risk.
“Our oath requires us to speak out when the constitution is violated and the American people are put at risk,” the signatories wrote. “Secretary Kennedy’s actions are compromising the health of this nation, and we demand his resignation.”
They urged Donald Trump to appoint a new health secretary with “qualifications and experience” to ensure policy is guided by peer-reviewed science.
Trump has acknowledged the unrest at the CDC, saying the agency was being “ripped apart” by disputes over vaccines, though he blamed pharmaceutical companies for failing to provide transparency over Covid-19 vaccine data. The White House previously defended Monarez’s dismissal, saying she was “not aligned with the president’s agenda”. Her firing last month prompted bipartisan criticism and a staff walkout at the CDC.
An HHS statement rejected suggestions that Kennedy’s rhetoric contributed to an attack on CDC headquarters in Atlanta on 8 August, in which a police officer was killed, calling the allegations “an attempt to politicise a tragedy”.
Responding to the letter, HHS communications director Andrew Nixon said: “Secretary Kennedy has been clear: the CDC has been broken for a long time. Restoring it as the world’s most trusted guardian of public health will take sustained reform and more personnel changes.”
The employees stressed they had signed the letter in a personal capacity, without government resources, adding that many colleagues had withheld their names for fear of retaliation.
Meanwhile, around 30 staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) were placed on leave last week after signing a separate letter criticising Trump’s overhaul of the agency and warning it risked a repeat of the devastation seen during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
