Right before Labor Day, a number of both senior and junior staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staged a walkout, protesting the ouster of the CDC director and the resignations of three top executives. This defiance reveals a troubling arrogance at the agency—a belief that it is untouchable by the President and unaccountable to the American people.
Former CDC directors published an op-ed in the New York Times, criticizing the shakeup orchestrated by RFK Jr., our new Secretary of Health and Human Services. They claim credit for increases in American life expectancy, but ignore that hygiene, medical breakthroughs, and safety improvements—not agency oversight—drove much of that progress. And let’s be frank: during COVID-19, many poorer countries managed the crisis better than the CDC or FDA. That failure cannot be swept under the rug. The former leaders also mock the idea of alternative “treatments”—even though vitamin A deficiency worsens measles, something the CDC itself acknowledges. RFK Jr. deserves credit for elevating awareness of such treatments beyond just vaccines.
Despite what the old guard warns, claims of measles being out of control ignore new screening technologies—ones developed under the Trump administration—that helped stop outbreaks. More importantly, RFK Jr. has ended that misuse of vaccine schedules which were imposed during COVID. This is a refreshing and long-await shift toward Making America Healthy Again.
President Trump also threw his support behind the new CDC leadership. He’s demanding Big Pharma justify its COVID-vaccine claims, asking whether Operation Warp Speed truly deserves all the praise. Meanwhile, we should never forget the treatments discredited or suppressed during COVID, like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. These are generic, inexpensive options that were sidelined, often without fair scientific evaluation. Because Big Pharma profits more from vaccines, too many officials—at the CDC and FDA—chose to bash alternatives rather than allow open discussion. Those who misled the public must go.
The recent walkout at the CDC makes one thing clear: the agency is long overdue for a house-cleaning. With new leadership and demands for transparency and scientific rigor, we finally see movement in the right direction. But there is more work to do. It’s time to fire the rest of the staff who put protection of bureaucracy ahead of public health.
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This post originally appeared at https://phyllisschlafly.com/liberalism-and-conservatism/big-government/fire-the-rest-of-the-cdc-staff-too-2/