Dr. Demetre Daskalakis resigned as Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, effective August 28, 2025. He named the destructive infusion of misinformation and pseudoscience promoted by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into CDC guidance and research initiatives as key reasons for his departure. He posted a copy of his resignation letter on social media that opened "Enough is enough." The letter stated an inability to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies that do not reflect scientific reality and that harm public health. His resignation followed a recent gunman attack on CDC headquarters motivated by vaccine conspiracy beliefs, though he clarified he was not stepping away because of that violence.
"Enough is enough," Daskalakis wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Debra Houry, the CDC's chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science. "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," he added, "and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public's health."
My resignation letter from CDC. Dear Dr. Houry, I am writing to formally resign from my position as Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), effective August 28, 2025, close of business.... - DrDemetre (@dr_demetre) August 27, 2025 Daskalakis' resignation comes just weeks after a gunman, who turned out to be a conspiracy theorist who believed that he'd somehow been injured
Collection
[
|
...
]