Dr. Demetre Daskalakis resigned as director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, citing irreconcilable ethical and scientific concerns. He accused HHS under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of sidelining career scientists, withholding data, dictating immunization schedules, and upending decades of vaccine policy. He said the agency was being used to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and that actions threaten the lives of young children and pregnant people. He warned that radical non-transparency and manipulation of data could return the nation to a pre-vaccine era. The resignation marks a major rupture between career scientists and the Kennedy administration.
Daskalakis posted his blistering resignation letter on X and Instagram on Wednesday evening. In it, he said he would step down as director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases on Thursday, citing irreconcilable ethical and scientific concerns. "I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public's health," Daskalakis wrote.
The resignation is the most dramatic rupture yet between career scientists and the Kennedy administration, which has upended decades of vaccine policy, often announcing sweeping shifts through social media posts or opinion pieces. Daskalakis warned that "radical non-transparency" and "unskilled manipulation of data to achieve a political end" risks returning the country to a "pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive."
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