A former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said Sunday that he can “only see harm coming” under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis resigned last Wednesday in the wake of the White House’s firing of the agency’s director, Susan Monarez. Three other top health officials also resigned, The Hill noted in its story published Sunday.

Daskalakis said during a Sunday interview on ABC’s “This Week” with Martha Raddatz that he can “only see harm coming” as a result of Kennedy’s policies, adding that his leadership wants “to see the undoing of vaccination.”

“I mean, from my vantage point as a doctor who’s taken the Hippocratic oath, I only see harm coming,” Daskalakis said during the interview. “I may be wrong. But … based on what I’ve heard with the new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, or ACIP, they’re really moving in an ideologic direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination. They do want to see the undoing of mRNA vaccination.”

"I didn’t think that we were going to be able to present science in a way free of ideology,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis said after stepping down from leading the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases under HHS Sec. Kennedy. https://t.co/f35hvwqc8A pic.twitter.com/45GMGXyTjX

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 31, 2025

Daskalakis also criticized Kennedy for changing the childhood schedule for covid-19 vaccination, saying officials were “directed that only children with underlying conditions would be the ones that should qualify for vaccination.”

He argued the data showed that “fifty-three percent of those children hospitalized last season had no underlying conditions. The data say that in that age range, you should be vaccinating your child.”

The White said Monarez was fired because she wasn’t “aligned with the president’s mission ” and refused to resign. Her lawyers responded that she was targeted for standing up for science and refused “to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.” Kennedy then named Jim O’Neill, one of his top advisers, to serve as acting director of the CDC while continuing in his role at Health and Human Services.

Daskalakis, a Washington D.C. native, began his career at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, and joined New York City’s Department of Health in 2013. He was a member of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Ending the Epidemic Task Force, an effort to decrease HIV transmission rates in New York City.

Hired by the CDC in December 2020, he was appointed a year and a half later by President Joe Biden as the White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator to respond to the 2022 — 2023 outbreak of the disease.

Daskalakis said Sunday that Kennedy’s arrival has removed any separation between political ideology and science.

“I didn’t think that we were going to be able to present science in a way free of ideology, that the firewall between science and ideology has completely broken down. And not having a scientific leader at CDC meant that we wouldn’t be able to have the necessary diplomacy and connection with HHS to be able to really execute on good public health,” Daskalakis said in explaining why he resigned.

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