More than 750 present and former staffers on the US Health and Human Services implored Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in a letter Wednesday to “stop spreading inaccurate health information” after a shooter fired lots of of rounds on the headquarters of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month.
The letter, additionally addressed to members of Congress, famous “the violent August 8th attack on CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta was not random.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation reported that the shooter had expressed discontent with the Covid-19 vaccine and wished to make his mistrust identified.
“The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization – and now, violence,” wrote the staffers, who emphasised they signed the letter “in our own personal capacities.” Some signed anonymously “out of fear of retaliation and personal safety.”
The August 8 shooting pockmarked a number of buildings on the nation’s public health company with bullet holes and killed DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose, whom the staffers emphasised they wished to honor.
The staffers wrote that Kennedy, who helmed an anti-vaccine advocacy group earlier than President Donald Trump named him health secretary, “is complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information.”
They cited earlier feedback from Kennedy calling CDC a “cesspool of corruption” and HHS’ termination of hundreds of staff in a “destroy-first-and-ask-questions-later manner,” leaving gaps in areas together with detection of infectious ailments, employee security and power illness prevention. They additionally stated “many CDC workers who focused on issues such as injury and violence prevention have been fired,” hampering the company’s means to reply to emergencies.
They additionally centered on Kennedy’s claims about vaccines, together with mRNA photographs and measles vaccines, saying he’s “undermining public health outbreak response,” and decried his dismissal of the complete Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the influential panel of exterior vaccine advisers to the CDC, and former feedback falsely tying vaccines to autism.
HHS didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. Kennedy stated in an August 9 post on social media that “we are actively supporting CDC staff on the ground and across the agency. Public health workers show up every day with purpose — even in moments of grief and uncertainty.”
Kennedy visited CDC headquarters two days later. But his response was criticized by public health leaders comparable to former US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, who called it “delayed and tepid.”
In their letter, the HHS staff requested Kennedy to “cease and publicly disavow the ongoing dissemination of false and misleading claims about vaccines, infectious disease transmission, and America’s public health institutions;” affirm the scientific integrity of the CDC; and assure the protection of the HHS workforce.
“If the very people that are supposed to be protecting Americans are not safe, then no American is safe,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, former principal deputy director of the CDC, stated in a statement. “An attack on a US government agency should be a moment in time when we come together. Instead, Secretary Kennedy continues to spread misinformation at the risk of American lives.”
NIH staffers who signed the letter additionally stated they referred to as on Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya “to refrain from his dangerous politicization of mRNA vaccine technology.”
NIH didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. The administration earlier this month said it was dismantling funding of mRNA vaccine improvement as a result of the vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”
Researchers have estimated that Covid-19 vaccines saved greater than 2.5 million lives.