A top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who resigned from the agency on Thursday responded to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt after she bashed him for using the term “pregnant people” in his resignation letter.
“One of those individuals wrote in his departure statement that he identifies pregnant women as pregnant people, so that’s not someone who we want in this administration,” Leavitt told reporters at a press conference Thursday.
Leavitt’s comment was in clear reference to the resignation letter of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, in which he stated, “the recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people.”
Daskalakis resigned alongside Drs. Deb Houry and Dan Jernigan, two other top officials who criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s changes to the agency’s vaccine advisory board and other vaccine policies.
Their resignations came shortly after Susan Monarez was fired from her position as CDC director, amid several other changes within the health department.
“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health,” Daskalakis wrote.
Leavitt told reporters, “If people are not aligned with the president’s vision and the secretary’s vision to make our country healthy again, then we will gladly show them the door.”
Daskalakis had the opportunity to respond to Leavitt’s statement on Thursday night’s episode of CNN’s “The Source” with Kaitlan Collins. He said he has always been an advocate for the LGBTQ community and “finds it outrageous” that the Trump administration “is trying to erase transgender people.”
“I very specifically used the term pregnant people, and very specifically added my pronouns at the end of my resignation letter to make the point that I am defying this … terrible strategy at trying to erase people and not allowing them to express their identities,” Daskalakis said. “So I accept the note from the press secretary and counter that with, I don’t care.”