Some 750 federal health employees signed the letter two weeks after a gunman fired 180 bullets into CDC buildings.
Hundreds of federal health employees have written to United States Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, imploring him to “stop spreading inaccurate health information”, weeks after a gunman fired hundreds of bullets into the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
Signatories to the letter on Wednesday, including hundreds of current HHS staff, accused Kennedy of “sowing public mistrust by questioning the integrity and morality of CDC’s workforce”, including by calling the public health agency a “cesspool of corruption”, during his 2024 failed presidential election campaign.
They also said that Kennedy’s policies, including cuts to thousands of HHS employees, were creating “dangerous gaps in areas like infectious diseases detection, worker safety, and chronic disease prevention and response”.
“The deliberate destruction of trust in America’s public health workforce puts lives at risk,” the workers said, noting that Kennedy had spread false claims about the measles vaccine, undermining the public health outbreak response to the disease.
They also noted that the recent attack on the CDC building was another example of the dangers resulting from the health secretary’s words.
The shooter, who had publicly expressed his distrust of COVID-19 vaccines, opened fire at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, fatally shooting police officer David Rose, 33, before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on August 8.
In a statement shared with US media outlets, the HHS said that “Secretary Kennedy is standing firmly with CDC employees – both on the ground and across every center – ensuring their safety and wellbeing remain a top priority”.
Kennedy has long been accused of spreading vaccine misinformation, including in a 2019 visit to Samoa, which came months before a measles outbreak on the South Pacific island which killed 81 people, mostly babies and young children.
In an interview with The Guardian newspaper earlier this year, Samoa’s prime minister, Fiame Naomi Mataʻafa, expressed surprise that Kennedy, who denies being against vaccines, was chosen as US health secretary.
More recently, Kennedy has cancelled hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for research into mRNA vaccines, a medical breakthrough credited with preventing millions of deaths from COVID-19 and having the potential to treat diseases such as cancer and HIV, according to the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
William Foege, who served as the director of the CDC from 1977 to 1983, penned an article in US health outlet Stat news this week, urging public health workers to “not back down”.
“We will live through this drought of values, principles, and facts and again apply our talents to improving global health and happiness,” he wrote.
Foege, who has been credited with playing an instrumental role in eradicating smallpox, a virus that was fatal in 30 percent of cases, went on to warn that Kennedy’s words were dangerous.
“In the meantime, be clear. Kennedy’s words can be as lethal as the smallpox virus. Americans deserve better,” he wrote.
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