Departing CDC leaders hailed by staff, supporters after wave of resignations

Hundreds of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workers and supporters gathered at its entrance Thursday to hail the four top leaders who had resigned en masse, while shock waves from the events of the preceding 24 hours pulsed through Atlanta, Washington and public health circles nationwide.

“We are heartbroken to have left but we had to do it,” Dr. Debra Houry, former chief medical officer at the CDC, told the cheering crowd.

Citing “the devastation that’s happening to our staff, our campus, the programs,” Houry said, “We love you all. We’ll do what it takes now to be on the other side, and support public health.”

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The resignations happened abruptly Wednesday as news broke that CDC Director Susan Monarez was being forced out over her refusal to rubber-stamp vaccine policies advocated by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his allies.

The White House said in an emailed statement that it terminated Monarez on Wednesday after she refused to resign, and that she was “not aligned with the President’s agenda.” The Associated Press reported that Jim O’Neill, a top deputy of Kennedy Jr., would serve as the agency’s acting director.

Houry was joined at the side of Clifton Road Thursday by Dr. Daniel Jernigan, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which does work on vaccinations.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

A fourth leader, Jennifer Layden, former director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology, resigned with them but was out of town.

Workers had planned to form the support line to “clap off” the leaders as they departed inside the CDC. Those plans were quashed when security unexpectedly arrived to escort the leaders off the grounds, they said.

Instead, the supporters lined both sides of a sidewalk outside the CDC entrance for at least a block. They carried flowers and rally signs while chanting “USA not RFK.”

The leaders made comments that were quickly echoed by public health experts who were interviewed elsewhere.

“If this is our football team, we’ve lost our quarterback and we’ve lost the entire line — you could debate whether that’s the offensive line or the defensive line — but our team is still expected to play in the Superbowl,” Dr. Wendy Armstrong, vice president of the Infectious Disease Society of America, told reporters Thursday.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

The resigning leaders said the decision was the culmination of weeks of deeply concerning disagreements over science.

Jernigan told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he had become concerned about the way requests were being made for data on autism and the lack of “a clear understanding of how the science was going to be done, whether or not the information would be treated appropriately.”

Kennedy has appointed a vaccine skeptic to lead a team to investigate causes of autism. The notion that vaccines cause autism was first publicized in research that has since been retracted.

Kennedy also has fired the entire advisory board that makes recommendations to the CDC director on vaccines, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. He has replaced some members with vaccine skeptics.

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Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

A report in the health news publication STAT said Monarez was forced out after a meeting with Kennedy on Monday in which she refused to rubber-stamp whatever new vaccine committee recommendations come her way. After HHS officials said she resigned, Monarez’s lawyers announced she had not and would not. The White House then issued its statement that she was terminated.

President Donald Trump has not spoken publicly about the leadership changes or the shooting that occurred at the CDC Aug. 8.

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Houry, Jernigan and Daskalakis all expressed reverence for the mission of public health and love for the CDC workers present. They grieved the sacrifice of DeKalb County Officer David Rose, who died trying to stop the shooting. They expressed fear for the health of Americans and the wider public because of changes at the agency.

The four leaders together were all involved in the CDC’s efforts to surveil emerging diseases, analyze the data, come up with possible actions and provide that information to the director.

“My heart goes out to them, because they know, as I know, that they are going to be replaced with … yes men and partisan hacks and partisan loyalists who will do whatever the Trump administration tells them to do and propagandize these issues as opposed to sticking to the science,” said state Rep. Saira Draper, a Democrat who represents parts of Atlanta and DeKalb County, including the CDC.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Draper said top Georgia leaders should speak out. A spokesman for Gov. Brian Kemp declined to comment.

The firing and resignations drew bipartisan rebuke on Capitol Hill.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Health Committee, signaled he could be losing confidence in the Department of Health and Human Services leadership. He urged the vaccine committee to indefinitely postpone an upcoming meeting “until significant oversight has been conducted.”

“If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership,” said Cassidy, a physician who was one of the deciding votes to confirm Kennedy earlier this year.

Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff said the back-and-forth was “yet more evidence that putting a quack like Bobby Kennedy in charge of public health was a grave error.”

On Clifton Road, Dr. Tom Clark said he came out because it felt like a moment when the four leaders were standing up for the public. Clark took an early retirement from the CDC under the cuts in April.

“I think we’re appreciative that they stayed as long as they did,” Clark said. “These are people who’ve served through multiple administrations and lean times and flush times and always tried to do the right thing and follow the science.

“It’s just sort of chilling for people.”