WASHINGTON — Sen. Lisa Murkowski broke from other Republicans on the Senate health committee at a hearing Wednesday on the firing last month of the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Murkowski said the hearing was about more than Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s decision to terminate Susan Monarez.
“It's about trust in our public health institutions,” Murkowski said, “because that's what I'm worried most about.”
The hearing focused on the nation’s vaccine policy. Kennedy dismissed a panel of vaccine experts in June and replaced them with his chosen members, who mostly share his belief that the CDC’s previously recommended vaccine schedule is bad for children.
Vaccine skepticism is gaining ground across the United States, though dozens of medical associations say the vaccine schedule is based on scientific evidence, saves lives and protects public health.
Monarez testified that Kennedy fired her because she would not agree to pre-approve whatever the new vaccine panel decides, and because she refused to fire career scientists at the CDC who don’t share Kennedy’s anti-vaccine beliefs.
Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee were split. Some criticized the former CDC director for resisting Kennedy’s agenda. Others, like Murkowski, backed a science-based approach to vaccines.
CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry resigned after Monarez was fired. Houry testified at the hearing that she was the last career employee in the CDC director’s office. Murkowski sounded astonished that political appointees are replacing public health experts.
“May I stop you there?” she said, interrupting Houry. “You're the last career [employee]. So then are you saying that everyone that is remaining is a political?”
Houry affirmed that’s the case in the CDC director’s office.
“And so there is nobody then that is — there must be somebody that is providing that career science,” Murkowski said.
Houry mentioned the directors of the centers within the CDC, though she said most are acting directors because their predecessors were fired or left.
Monarez said Kennedy ordered her not to speak to the career CDC scientists.
Murkowski, like all but one Republican senator, voted to confirm Kennedy in February, despite her misgivings about his vaccine stance.
Kennedy had pledged to senators he’d change CDC recommendations only if based on peer-reviewed and widely accepted science.
The Kennedy-aligned vaccine panel meets Thursday. Monarez said Kennedy told her two days before she was fired that the childhood vaccine schedule would change in September.
The CDC vaccine schedule isn’t mandatory but it may determine which injections health insurance plans will cover.
