WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is having a leadership crisis since many high-ranking officials, including Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, have quit in protest of the new administration’s policies. The surge of people leaving comes after the termination of CDC Director Susan Monarez, who had only been in charge for a month.
Daskalakis said in a letter on X that he was stepping down as Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. He said he couldn’t work in a place that uses the CDC to make policies and materials that don’t represent scientific truth and are meant to injure, not help, people’s health. Daskalakis, who also spoke out against a “recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule,” said he was worried that the new rules would “put the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant women at risk.” He said that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is quite public against some vaccine practices, was the main reason he left.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, said in response to Daskalakis’s departure, “He calls pregnant women ‘pregnant people,’ so we don’t want him in this administration anyway.” Leavitt said that the administration is “committed to restoring trust and transparency and credibility to the CDC” and that they would “gladly show them the door” to anyone who doesn’t agree with the goals of President Donald Trump and Secretary Kennedy.
The trouble started when CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired. She and Kennedy apparently disagreed about revisions to the country’s vaccine program. Monarez’s lawyers said that she was targeted because she wouldn’t “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives” and terminate health professionals who were doing their jobs well. Dr. Debra Houry, chief medical officer; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Jen Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology are all leaving the CDC along with Daskalakis.
Health authorities and medical associations are worried about these high-profile resignations. They say that losing experienced professionals could put the health of the whole country at danger. Critics say that the Trump administration is using public health for political gain and hurting scientific knowledge. The White House, on the other hand, says that the changes are needed to modernize the agency and make it fit with the administration’s goal of “making America healthy again.”