Career public health expert Susan Monales provided vivid and dramatic details about the day Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he had fired her.
Former CDC director reveals pressure to fire scientists at CDC
Former CDC director Susan Monares told lawmakers he was told to sign off to vaccine recommendations regardless of scientific evidence.
WASHINGTON – The top scientist who was kicked out of the Trump administration last month defended himself at a Congressional hearing on September 17, raising vigilance over the leadership of Health and Human Services Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and lack of preparation for the upcoming public health crisis.
In his dramatic testimony, Susan Monales said the GOP and Democrat senators were asked to compromise on his integrity as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She was fired on August 25 after saying she refused to fire a career employee who opposed Kennedy about the effectiveness of the vaccine.
She also said she was directed to preemptively give “blanket approval” for recommendations from the major CDC vaccine panel “regardless of scientific evidence.”
Monares said the suspicious demands oppose her ethics as a scientist and civil servant.
“I was fired for keeping a line on scientific integrity,” she said. “But that line won’t go away with me. It now decides that every parent decides to vaccine their children.
The impressive scene of Capitol Hill highlighted a rare area where dissatisfaction between President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans with his administration. The GOP Senator initially became the country’s top health official in favor of RJK Jr., but his vaccine skepticism and the subsequent CDC disruption sparked frustration among lawmakers, usually in the White House and Rockstep.
“The confusion at the pinnacle of public health agencies is not good for Americans,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican physician in Louisiana and chairman of the Senate’s Health Committee.
Monares’ allegations “stricken the core of the CDC’s credibility,” he said.
The hearing was particularly reminiscent of the time before Trump administration officials who came to charges at Capitol Hill were kicked out, especially at the beginning of the Republican president’s first term. In June 2017, former FBI director James Comey told the Senate committee that Trump had called for “loyalty” from him before firing him. Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates also told lawmakers she was kicked out for refusing to comply with Trump’s travel ban.
Monares describes the firing with clear details.
Monares said he held three enthusiastic meetings with RFK Jr. on August 25th.
At one of the meetings, she said she asked her to fire other CDC officials or hand her out. He also told her to rubber stamp her recommendations for future vaccines, she said.
She refused to resign, “That’s when he said he had already told the White House about getting me to get rid of me,” she said.
“The whole meeting was very nervous,” Monales said. “He was very upset.”
Testifying before another Congressional Committee two weeks ago, Kennedy said he didn’t ask Monales to approve vaccine recommendations, but wanted her to open up about them.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement: “Monales was fired for failing to trust his secretary and for declaring that he would act maliciously to undermine the president’s agenda.
Monares says RFK Jr. told him not to talk to Congress
Monales also said Kennedy told her not to raise concerns about his leadership with members of Congress.
“I was instructed not to talk directly to the senator,” she said.
The proposal infuriated Democrats.
“It’s very serious to tell the CDC director not to talk to the person who confirmed her and the person in charge of monitoring,” said D-Virginia Sen. Tim Kane.
Nixon said Monales is “severely distorting” the expectations that HHS staff will “follow following standard long-standing protocols for communicating with Congress through the secretary’s office for legislation.”
Questioning childhood vaccine schedules
Sen. R-Kentucky, Sen. Rand Paul, has participated in a decisive exchange with Monales about the CDC’s childhood vaccine recommendations and the effectiveness of the newborn Covid-19 vaccine and hepatitis B shot.
“Does the Covid vaccine reduce mortality rates for children under the age of 18?” asked Paul.
“I can,” Monales said.
“That’s a ridiculous answer,” he replied.
Paul said that Monares’ rejection of firefighters was not about protecting “unbidden” and “beautiful scientists,” but people who recommend that children over six months can receive the Covid vaccine.
Ophthalmologist Paul said he is in favor of changing the schedule for childhood vaccines.
Kennedy received a briefing during the measles outbreak and spread the misinformation
In an exchange with Sen. Susan Collins, another public health official who resigned from the Trump administration, he said the CDC’s response to the recent outbreak of measles is significantly different from the way agents normally operate.
Debra Houry, former chief medical officer of the CDC, said he had never explained to Kennedy.
“The centre director who saw measles didn’t explain his secretary and would normally explain his leadership during the outbreak response,” she said.
Kennedy also spreads misinformation about vaccines and recommends drugs to doctors who “causing harm” and “causing harm.”
“He said the vaccine has a fetal part, so he had to send a note to the leadership team to correct that incorrect information,” she said.
Kennedy claims that it is avoided by some religious groups that are eschewing measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines because it contains “cancelled fetal fragments” and “DNA particles.”
In fact, according to the Sabine Center at Columbia Law School, vaccines are “generated using human cell lines that result from two legal abortions in the 1960s, but these cells are absent in the final vaccine.”
