A 'hostile takeover': ousted CDC official raises alarm over RFK Jr approach to infectious disease [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Sat 4 Oct 2025 07.00 EDT


Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has avoided meetings with top health officials, even as deadly outbreaks unfolded, and pushed to make unprecedented changes to the childhood immunization schedule, according to a recently ousted leader of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Debra Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer, spoke with the Guardian after testifying before a Senate committee about her eight months serving under Kennedy, offering insight into a health secretary who has been criticized as shunning expertise in favor of spreading misinformation, denigrating science, and dismantling institutions crucial for Americans’ health. Houry’s account adds to depictions from former CDC director Susan Monarez of a distant and at times explosively angry leader of the US public health system – leading Houry to call for Kennedy’s resignation.

The CDC’s priorities have changed dramatically, she pointed out. “It really represents a hostile takeover of the agency,” she said. “It gives me concern about what we can trust coming out of the overall agency as well, not just on vaccine safety.” When Tom Price became HHS secretary during Donald Trump’s first administration, he called senior agency officials to Washington DC for a two-week meeting, laying a strong foundation and staying in frequent contact. Other health leaders took a similar approach.

“In the prior Trump administration, I had briefed the secretary, I talked to the assistant secretary all the time,” Houry said. Two top HHS officials from Trump’s first administration have now offered to serve as job references after she left the CDC position without a backup plan, she said. But in the first eight months of the second Trump administration, Houry never once briefed Kennedy on any topic. She spent little time with him at all.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/04/cdc-rfk-jr-infectious-disease-testimony