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By Julie Steenhuysen and Dan Levine
(Reuters) -CDC Director Susan Monarez had resisted changes to vaccine policy advanced by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that she believed contradicted scientific evidence and could prove to be illegal before being fired on Wednesday, a close associate said on Thursday.
The revelation and interviews with top officials who resigned in the wake of the director's firing underscore the growing division over the U.S. approach to public health.
Richard Besser, former acting director of the CDC, said on a call with media members that he spoke with Monarez on Wednesday.
"She said that there were two things she would never do in the job. One was anything that was deemed illegal, and the second was anything that she felt flew in the face of science," Besser said, "and she said she was asked to do both of those."
Monarez's firing was followed by the departure of three top officials at the agency, who told Reuters on Thursday they too had resigned over anti-vaccine policies and misinformation being pushed by Kennedy and his team.
The leadership upheaval at the CDC comes as Kennedy has made sweeping changes to vaccine policies since taking office this year, including firing its entire expert vaccine advisory panel and replacing them with like-minded anti-vaccine activists and other hand-picked advisers.
On Wednesday, the FDA restricted which Americans would be eligible for updated COVID-19 shots.
"(Monarez) was not aligned with the president's mission to Make America Healthy Again, and the secretary asked her to resign. She said she would, and then she said she wouldn't, so the president fired her," White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday, adding a replacement would be announced soon.
Monarez's attorneys Mark S. Zaid and Abbe David Lowell said her firing notification was legally deficient and that she remained CDC director. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
ESCORTED OFF CAMPUS
The trio of departed officials - Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetre Daskalakis and National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Daniel Jernigan - were escorted from the CDC's Atlanta headquarters campus on Thursday morning, according to four sources familiar with the situation.
Houry and Daskalakis cited a rise in health misinformation, particularly on vaccines, attacks on science, the weaponization of public health, and attempts to cut the agency's budget in their resignation letters reviewed by Reuters.
"I'm a doctor. I took the Hippocratic oath that said 'first, do no harm.' I believe harm is going to happen, and so I can't be a part of it," Daskalakis said in an interview.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment.
Since taking office in January, Trump has wrested control over U.S. government agencies that for years were seen as independent from presidential politics as they oversee such matters as elections, stock markets and labor unrest.
Kennedy declined to comment during a Thursday interview on the specifics of the departures.
"The agency is in trouble, and we need to fix it and we are fixing it. And it may be that some people should not be working there anymore," he told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program.
Besser said Kennedy insisted Monarez accept all of the revamped vaccine committee's future recommendations. The CDC director traditionally has the final say on vaccine policy and can accept or reject the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices' recommendations.
The CDC has been heavily criticized by health experts in recent months for dropping its recommendation that pregnant women be vaccinated against COVID and for narrowing its backing of the shots for children with health complications.
In addition to its role in protecting the health of the U.S. population, the CDC is a global leader in detecting and responding to infectious disease outbreaks and played a significant role in eradicating smallpox, reducing the global incidence of polio, and controlling HIV/AIDS.
ONE OF SEVERAL FIRINGS
Monarez is one of at least three Senate-confirmed regulatory officials Trump has moved to fire in the last three days. The others are Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and Surface Transportation Board member Robert Primus.
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican who expressed wariness about Kennedy's anti-vaccine views before backing him, said on Thursday that a scheduled September ACIP meeting should be postponed.
“Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting," he said in a statement.
During her confirmation hearing, Monarez said she has not seen evidence linking vaccines and autism, a view that aligns with accepted science but not with Kennedy.
Since taking the job, he has made misleading and unscientific claims about vaccines including that the measles vaccine contains cells from aborted fetuses and the mumps vaccination does not work.
Kennedy launched a department-wide effort to investigate the rise in autism rates among children in the U.S., which he has said, without any scientific evidence, is due to "environmental toxins." He has said the agency will present some of its findings in September.
Kennedy said he could seek regulatory action on the findings.
(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, David Thomas, Trevor Hunnicutt, Leah Douglas and Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington and Michael Erman in New York; Writing by Costas Pitas; Editing by Caroline Humer, Chizu Nomiyama, Nick Zieminski and Bill Berkrot)
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