Former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warns agency headed for a crack-up under RFK Jr.
The former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control warned Friday that the nation's public health agency is in troubled water under U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
"Today, I'm most saddened by the lives that will be lost, those preventable deaths, because of the erosion of our vaccine infrastructure that had previously been designed to foster truth, transparency and safety," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who helmed the agency during the Biden administration, said Friday.
"In today's divided America, there's actually one consensus that remains: 92% of parents still vaccinate their children," she continued. "Surely we can all agree we don't want our children to die."
Walensky made her remarks during a Friday news conference at the Codman Square Health Center in Dorchester, organized by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.
Walensky, the former chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Mass General, criticized Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, for "sowing doubt and confusion into who should get vaccines."
"For example, a posting from HHS on X noted that pregnant women would no longer be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine when their very own [Food and Drug Administration] commissioner had just authored a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine, which clearly stated that pregnant women are on the list of underlying medical conditions that, quote, increase a person's risk of severe COVID19," she said.
Walensky also pointed to the loss of $500 million in research funding for MRNA vaccines and the dismissals and departures of top agency officials.
A spokesperson for HHS did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday afternoon for this story.
On Friday, Markey called on Kennedy to resign, charging that his policies are "endangering the lives of every American family."
The news conference came the day after Kennedy, the son of the late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., and nephew of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., faced pointed bipartisan questioning on Capitol Hill over his vaccine policies and recent leadership chaos at the CDC.
Some of the questioning by the Senate Finance Committee came from Republican senators who had initially backed Kennedy as the nation's top public health official.
Kennedy also faced sharp questioning from U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who pressed him on the firing of former CDC Director Susan Monarez.
Kennedy claimed that he asked Monarez to resign because she admitted she was not "trustworthy," The Washington Post reported .
A surprised Warren pointed out that just a month earlier, Kennedy had praised her as "unimpeachable," the newspaper reported.
"And in a month, she became a liar?" Warren asked.
It also came the day after Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey announced a three-pronged strategy that would put the state in charge of its own vaccine policy.
"I'm so grateful to Gov. Healey and [state Public Health Commissioner Dr. Robbie] Goldstein for the actions [Thursday] so that this is less of a challenge here in the great state of Massachusetts," Walensky said.
On Friday, Markey also sent a letter to top executives at CVS and Walgreens pressing them on the availability of COVID-19 vaccines nationwide.
This week, Massachusetts's Goldstein issued a standing order allowing pharmacists to administer the COVID-19 vaccines to state residents aged 5 and older. Children younger than 5 will receive the vaccinations from their physicians.
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