WASHINGTON — The ousted director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Monarez, told lawmakers Wednesday that her former boss, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told her he plans to change the childhood vaccine schedule this month.
She also said Kennedy told her he had spoken to President Trump about upcoming changes to the vaccine schedule before he pushed her out of the agency.
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The comments came during a tense hearing before a Senate health committee, which was set to investigate alleged political influences on the decision-making of America’s leading public health institution.
“He did not have any data or science to point to,” Monarez said of the conversation with Kennedy about the childhood vaccine schedule. She said she told Kennedy she would be “open to changing” the schedule if data pointed to a need for a change. To that, the secretary responded that “CDC had never collected the science or the data to make it available related to the safety or efficacy,” Monarez said Wednesday.
Debra Houry, another former CDC official, said in the hearing she asked for any data or evidence to change how children get vaccines in the U.S. She did not get any, she said.
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Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the chairman of the Senate health committee, asked Monarez if she had been told to meet with anyone outside of the Department of Health and Human Services. She said Kennedy told her to meet with Aaron Siri, Kennedy’s ally in legal fights against vaccine makers, and a prominent figure in the world of vaccine critics.
In their second meeting — shortly before Monarez was pushed out of her job — Kennedy “indicated that one of his colleagues or collaborators, I don’t know what their relationship is, was coming into town the following week, and he wanted me to meet with that person,” Monarez told senators, referring to Siri. (Siri, an attorney whose firm has a robust vaccine-injury litigation team, has challenged the approval of polio vaccines.)
The Monarez hearing comes one day before the CDC’s remade vaccine advisory panel is set to meet to discuss a wide range of vaccine-related topics.
Earlier this year, Kennedy fired previous members and installed new ones, many of whom have a history of skepticism toward Covid vaccines and mandates. And earlier this week, the secretary announced five more members being added to the group.
Cassidy previously called for the group’s meetings to be delayed because of the turmoil at the CDC.
Debra Houry, another former CDC official, also said in her written testimony to the committee that Kennedy sent a contractor to obtain access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink. CDC staff “were told the gold standard science around assurances of confidentiality, and a transparent study protocol, did not apply to this researcher,” Houry said.
This story is breaking and will be updated.