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One of the top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who resigned his position said that he fears that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will only do more harm to public health through his assault on vaccines.
Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned his position as director of National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases last week, appeared on This Week on ABC and spoke with Martha Raddatz. Daskalakis specifically cited how Kennedy changed the recommendations for childhood vaccinations for Covid-19.
“We were directed that only children with underlying conditions would be the ones that should qualify for vaccination,” he said.
The Food and Drug Administration approved updated shots for Covid-19 last week but announced that Pfizer’s vaccine would not be available to children under the age of 5. Kennedy also said that the vaccines would be available for people with underlying risks. But some fear that making the vaccine available only to those people would limit access to everyone.
“The data say that in that age range you should be vaccinating your child,” Daskalakis said. “I understand that not everybody does it, but they have limited access by narrowing that recommendation – insurance may not cover it.”
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Demetre Daskalakis said he feared the Trump administration could target the hepatitis B vaccine
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Daskalakis and a handful of officials resigned from the CDC after the Trump administration fired its director Susan Monarez. Trump had nominated Monarez to be CDC director and she was the first Senate-confirmed director of the agency.
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In recent months, Kennedy, who spent years promoting the debunked concept that childhood vaccinations contribute to autism, has taken numerous steps to weaken vaccine infrastructure. This summer, Kennedy abruptly fired the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices panel. Kennedy also canceled $500 million in vaccine development projects that use mRNA technology.
“I only see harm coming,” Daskalakis said. “I may be wrong, but based on what I'm seeing, based on what I've heard with the new members of the advisory committee for Immunization Practices, or ACIP. They're really moving in an ideological direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination.”
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Kennedy has spent years promoting the debunked concept that childhood vaccinations contribute to autism(Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Daskalakis said that while the new ACIP panel has a focus on Covid-19 vaccines, he feared that other vaccines might be targeted. He pointed out how the hepatitis B vaccine is on the agenda for ACIP’s meeting in September.
“I predict that what they're going to do is try to change the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine so that kids don't get it when they’re born,” he said.
Daskalakis said that it might not matter as much if a mother’s hepatitis B status is known and they have connection to care.
“But if you have a mother who's gotten prenatal care, who comes into deliver, we have one bite of that apple so that child gets that important hepatitis B vaccine,” he said. “Why does it matter? Kids who have hepatitis B, they get liver scarring, is called cirrhosis later in life, or it's a really common cause of liver cancer.”
After Monarez’s dismissal, deputy HHS secretary Jim O’Neill was sworn in as acting CDC director. Raddatz asked if Daskalakis trusted O’Neill’s claim that he is in favor of vaccines.
“As someone who's worked in government, I have faith in that the people who are given positions of prominence over health agencies generally are people who are looking looking toward the public health,” he said.
But O’Neill said on X that “CDC lost public trust by manipulating health data to support a political narrative,” which Daskalakis said worried him.
“But based on the very first post that I've seen from him on X where he says that CDC scientists manipulated data to be able to follow an ideology or an agenda in the childhood schedule, makes me think that I know what leader he serves, and that leader is one that does not believe in vaccination,” Daskalakis said. “And who will say, we're not going to limit access to vaccine, but what are they going to do instead? Yeah, it'll be on the shelf, but you're not going to be able to find it at a pharmacy.”
Prior to the Trump administration, Daskalakis worked in the CDC and helped coordinate the Biden administration’s response to the Mpox outbreak.
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Former CDC acting director Richard Besser also appeared on This Week and criticized the fact O’Neill had no public health experience. He also criticized how Kennedy ended mandates on vaccination.
“I think with this secretary, we are on a path to it being largely parental choice,” Besser said. “That is going to put at risk those people who for whom the vaccine didn't work, and children who may have medical conditions where they can't get vaccinated. That is a major step backwards for public health.”