Editorial: RFK Jr.’s vision for the CDC should alarm Congress

Susan Monarez’s 28-day tenure as the nation’s top public health official was doomed from the start. Her boss, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wanted her to do two things: champion his dubious anti-vaccine agenda and uphold “gold-standard science” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recognizing the conflict, Monarez chose the latter and was fired last month.

Monarez’s departure from the CDC highlights a dilemma that any successor will face: Under Kennedy, no serious scientist can hold the job. The risk this vacuum of expertise could pose to Americans’ health and safety is significant.

Kennedy has been a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist for decades. Public frustration with pandemic-era mask and vaccine mandates helped catapult him to popularity and may have led to his appointment as health secretary. Although the White House gave Kennedy permission to “go wild” on health, lawmakers were given assurances he wouldn’t do much to change vaccine policy.

So much for that. Since assuming his post, Kennedy has taken steps to restrict availability of the covid-19 shot, which he once falsely called “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” He also purged the panel of experts that offers recommendations about vaccine use, cut critical vaccine research and plans to publish a report “within a month” that aims to identify the heretofore elusive causes of autism, which he strongly suggests is caused by vaccines. (There’s no evidence to support this.)

In a hearing last week, Kennedy defended these measures as a “once-in-a-generation” effort to remake the CDC and restore “gold-standard science.” They’re nothing of the sort. Rather, the secretary appears intent on clearing room for more pliable subordinates, including his handpicked vaccine panel. Monarez says Kennedy asked her to preapprove this group’s recommendations, which are due this month. When she refused, she was given the choice to resign or lose her job. Kennedy refutes this account.

Monarez’s departure itself isn’t a crisis. More troubling is the exodus of top-level experts behind her — to say nothing of the hundreds of staff who’ve already been let go.

The prospect of a CDC hollowed of expertise should alarm lawmakers. When an outbreak hits, seasoned leaders are needed to work across agencies, coordinate with state and local health officials, field calls from governors and foreign ministries of health and communicate with the public. Staffing the agency with inexperienced loyalists will waste time and resources, increase the chances of costly mistakes and put American lives at risk.

Almost a dozen Democratic senators have demanded Kennedy’s resignation, while influential Republicans including Bill Cassidy and Lisa Murkowski have called for oversight of Monarez’s firing. An investigation is likely in order. Although lawmakers pressed Kennedy to explain his actions in last week’s hearing, they failed to set a deadline for filling Monarez’s role with a qualified replacement. It isn’t too late: Concerns that the secretary might keep the job open — granting himself more authority in the interim — are mounting.

The countless public health threats the CDC regularly contains are invisible to most Americans. Lawmakers ought to know better.

— Bloomberg