More than 1,000 past and present Department of Health and Human Services staffers called on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign in an open letter published Wednesday, saying his vaccine policies have endangered the lives of Americans.
“We swore an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution and to serve the American people,” reads the letter, published on the Save HHS website and signed by 1,040 health workers. “Our oath requires us to speak out when the Constitution is violated and the American people are put at risk.”
“Thus, we warn the President, Congress, and the Public that Secretary Kennedy’s actions are compromising the health of this nation, and we demand Secretary Kennedy’s resignation.”
The letter comes two days after former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials wrote in a New York Times op-ed that Kennedy’s leadership and “unacceptable” ousting of former CDC Director Susan Monarez was “unlike anything we had ever seen.”
Monarez, a trained microbiologist and immunologist, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in July. In a confirmation hearing a month prior, she said her top priority as head of the CDC would be restoring trust in the agency.
The Health and Human Services Department announced Monarez’s departure last week in a brief social media post, however, after she refused to resign. Her lawyers said in a statement that she was targeted for refusing to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives.”
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Monarez’s ousting sparked a veritable exodus of CDC staffers. The Trump administration has since selected Jim O’Neill, a biotech investor with no medical background, as her replacement.
“Secretary Kennedy has been clear: the CDC has been broken for a long time,” Andrew Nixon, HHS communications director, told HuffPost in a statement. “Restoring it as the world’s most trusted guardian of public health will take sustained reform and more personnel changes. From his first day in office, he pledged to check his assumptions at the door—and he asked every HHS colleague to do the same.”
The health workers who signed Wednesday’s letter argued Kennedy is endangering the public by facilitating agency departures and appointing “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts.” They also urged federal lawmakers to act.
“Should he decline to resign, we call upon the President and U.S. Congress to appoint a new Secretary of Health and Human Services, one whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science,” the letter reads.