“We saw what happened with Susan,” said Debra Houry, a former CDC medical director who resigned in protest of Kennedy’s political interference. told Stat News. “She couldn’t make personnel or policy decisions. What has changed? Kennedy hasn’t changed.”
“A disaster”
Washington Post report noted that amid the search for a new CDC director, some well-qualified candidates sought promises of autonomy so they could fire and hire staff and keep science isolated from political influence. Those candidates were not selected, sources told the Post.
Trump announced Schwartz’s nomination in a post on social media on Wednesday, calling her “a STAR” and announced nominations for three other positions at the agency. “These highly respected Doctors of Medicine have the knowledge, experience, and SUPERIOR degrees to restore the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE at the CDC,” he wrote.
Kennedy responded with a much more measured message, writing: “I congratulate Dr. Schwartz and the new CDC leadership team. I look forward to working together to restore trust, accountability, and scientific integrity at the CDC so we can return them to their core mission and make America healthy again.”
Meanwhile, Kennedy’s close anti-vaccine ally and former personal attorney, Aaron Siri, did not hold backsaying that Schwartz’s leadership at the CDC “would probably be a disaster.”
“Schwartz led the nationwide Covid-19 vaccine rollout, and his long record of directly issuing civil and military vaccination mandates that crush human rights, including mandatory injection of smallpox, anthrax, and flu vaccines into US forces, and disciplining those who refused, reflects that he lacks the basic ethics and morals to lead the CDC,” Siri wrote.
“His previous promotion, much less his mandates, of nearly a dozen different vaccines leaves little hope that he will objectively oversee the CDC vaccine program…” he concluded.
