At a Senate hearing on Wednesday, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Susan Monarez said she was fired from her role for not rubber stamping vaccine recommendations from her boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., regardless of whether they were backed by scientific evidence.
Just two months after Monarez was sworn in to the job, HHS announced on August 27 that she was no longer the director of the CDC. She had been the acting director since January and was the first CDC director to receive Senate confirmation after a law took effect this year requiring the president's nominee to receive Senate approval. Her ousting led to an exodus of top CDC officials from the agency.
On July 30, when Monarez was sworn in, Kennedy remarked that she had "unimpeachable scientific credentials" and that he had "full confidence in her ability to restore the CDC's role as the most trusted authority in public health." Monarez, a microbiologist and immunologist, was previously the deputy director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, an agency within HHS that funds research for biomedical and health breakthroughs.
Senators on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions called Wednesday's hearing to shed light on the events leading up to Monarez's dismissal. "This hearing is a direct response to President Trump's call for radical transparency in how we conduct governmental affairs," said senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican and physician from Louisiana who serves as chairman of the committee.
The hearing follows mass layoffs at HHS and a shooting at CDC in August by a gunman who was protesting the Covid-19 vaccine. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has implemented new restrictions on the Covid-19 vaccine in his short tenure. He has also removed every sitting member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, a group of outside experts that provides vaccine recommendations to the CDC and is scheduled to meet September 18 and 19. ACIP's recommendations are often adopted by the CDC director and significantly influence state vaccination requirements.
"Today should not be about me. Today should be about the future of trust in public," Monarez said at the beginning of her testimony.
She went on to say that on the morning of August 25, Kennedy demanded two things of her that she said were "inconsistent" with her oath of office and the ethics required of a public official.
"He directed me to commit, in advance, to approving every ACIP recommendation, regardless of the scientific evidence," she said. "He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause. He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign. I responded that I could not pre-approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence, and I had no basis to fire scientific experts."
Kennedy responded that he had already spoken with the White House several times about removing her, according to Monarez. "Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology or compromise my integrity," she said.