MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
And now to a portrait of an agency in apparent freefall. I would tell you who's in charge today at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta if we knew. To recap, Susan Monarez had just been confirmed as director at the end of July. Yesterday on X, the Department of Health and Human Services posted that she is no longer in charge. Monarez said, not so fast, that she would not resign, that only the president has the power to fire her, which White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says he has done. And then late this afternoon, we learned that Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill will be named interim director of the CDC. That's according to an administration official not authorized to discuss the decision.
Well earlier today, I spoke with someone who knows well the challenges of running the CDC - Dr. Tom Frieden. He was director there during the Obama administration. And I asked him is it clear to him who's in charge?
TOM FRIEDEN: No, it is not. This is unprecedented. There has, in the 80-year history of the CDC, never been a director fired and never had a situation like this where you have essentially a purge, where much of the top leadership leaves from one day to the next. The CDC works 24/7 to protect Americans from threats. And when the top leaders who have been there through Democratic and Republican administrations for decades, leave, we are all less safe.
KELLY: You've just pointed out that it is not just Susan Monarez as director who appears to have exited the CDC in the last 24 hours. We know of four other senior leaders who have left, including the CDC's chief medical officer, including the director of the Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. What are you hearing from Atlanta headquarters today?
FRIEDEN: I'm not in touch with folks at CDC. I can only imagine what's happening there, but it's a really sad day. The CDC has scientists and doctors and specialists who dedicate their careers to protecting Americans from threats. And what we've seen over the past six to eight months is half of all of the CDC centers eliminated, including the centers that deal with cancer, chronic disease, much of the center that deals with injury, like traumatic brain injuries, the center that deals with programs that deal with environmental health. These are real threats that Americans face and to which we are now much more vulnerable. And perhaps the biggest threat is the lack of good information. I never thought I would see the day when I couldn't rely on the CDC website for fact-based information with transparency about how it got there, what it's recommending and why.
KELLY: So to those - and I will put myself in this camp - trying to figure out what exactly is happening - I will note reporting from my colleague, Selena Simmons-Duffin, she has reporting that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had clashed with Susan Monarez over his vaccine policies. Her lawyers have put out a statement saying she was targeted for refusing to - and I'm quoting - refusing to "rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives." Do you have any insight into what may be playing out behind the scenes here?
FRIEDEN: What I can take is what Secretary Kennedy has said about a group called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, about a group called Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. And to be blunt, he has repeatedly stated things that are false, that are untrue, that are based on really unscientific beliefs and the lack of knowledge. I had to spend a couple of days tracking down one of them. It was a reference to an obscure study that has since been debunked.
So what we're seeing is really an unraveling of the health protections, particularly on vaccinations - the firing, as Secretary Kennedy did, of all members of the ACIP, the installing of people who don't have a vaccine fact history, the installing of people who have very strange beliefs on vaccines that don't have a scientific basis. And this isn't just about some committee here or there. This committee determines whether half of the children in America have access to life-saving childhood vaccines.
KELLY: I will note that at the White House today, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president has the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission. That is accurate. I will also note that I called this a leadership void at the top of the CDC. The U.S. still does not have a confirmed surgeon general in that post. You know, as you know well, public trust in our public health institutions was already greatly damaged after the COVID pandemic. What kind of impact might a void at the top of CDC have?
FRIEDEN: For 80 years, CDC has been a beacon of health protection for the United States and the world, and that beacon is now in grave danger of being extinguished, and all of us would be less safe as a result. To regain trust means being transparent about what decisions are being made, how, on what basis. That actually is how the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has worked for 60 years. That is not how decisions on what vaccines to recommend have been made in the past six months.
KELLY: That's Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the CDC. His new book, "The Formula For Better Health," is out next month. Dr. Frieden, thank you for your time.
FRIEDEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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