{"id":191950,"date":"2025-09-01T17:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T17:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/191950\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T17:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T17:05:11","slug":"departing-cdc-leader-debra-houry-sounds-alarm-over-robert-f-kennedy-jr-covid-vaccine-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/191950\/","title":{"rendered":"Departing CDC Leader Debra Houry Sounds Alarm Over Robert F. Kennedy Jr. COVID Vaccine Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

The most senior official to quit the CDC in protest at the firing of its director has warned against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s \u201cdangerous\u201d plan\u2014revealed by the Daily Beast last week\u2014that could ban the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.<\/p>\n

Debra Houry, chief medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and deputy director for program and science, abruptly quit last Wednesday along with three other top CDC officials.<\/p>\n

That followed the firing of their boss, CDC director Susan Monarez<\/a>, but the officials also complained about the health secretary\u2019s refusal to engage on science and policy issues with experts from the public health agency.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Daily Beast following her resignation, Houry revealed her belief that RFK Jr. was taking his lead on immunization matters from the discredited anti-vax group he himself used to lead, Children\u2019s Health Defense, rather than from experienced CDC physicians like herself.<\/p>\n

When asked if she would be surprised to see Kennedy yank the COVID mRNA vaccine off the market altogether amid claims it is causing \u201cvaccine injuries,\u201d as reported by the Beast last Monday<\/a>, Houry replied: \u201cMaybe not, maybe not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WASHINGTON,Debra Houry was a deputy director at the CDC and also served as its chief medical officer. Alex Wong\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Houry said she felt it would be \u201cdifficult\u201d for the Trump administration to pull the jab altogether \u201cright now,\u201d because it still has approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA would, by law, have to prove the vaccines were unsafe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But she added: \u201cI think we have seen that policy decisions are sometimes made without science, and\u2026 there\u2019s been a lot of things that I have been surprised at that have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since March, the FDA has been headed up by Trump ally Marty Makary, who has questioned the necessity of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in some cohorts of the U.S. population.<\/p>\n

In May, he announced that the FDA would narrow eligibility to people over 65 or those at high risk, and compel manufacturers to undertake extensive studies to determine the benefits for children and healthy young adults. That came into effect last week<\/a>, with the support of RFK Jr.<\/p>\n

Houry said that if the government were to axe COVID mRNA vaccines altogether, it would see an increase in the deaths of the vulnerable\u2014including babies. <\/p>\n

\"DonaldPresident Donald Trump appears to be giving Kennedy plenty of power as his HHS Secretary. JIM WATSON\/JIM WATSON\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cIf all COVID vaccines were gone, that would be devastating. What we would see is older adults, or those with multiple medical conditions, or young babies, would be more likely to die,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, the COVID variants aren\u2019t quite as virulent as earlier, and as a natural immunity in general, just with some of the exposure\u2026 is more protective. Right now, in the U.S., people haven\u2019t been that sick with it. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut that doesn\u2019t mean that it wouldn\u2019t happen. And so you want to make sure that you\u2019re prepared. And if you don\u2019t have vaccines, that\u2019s dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following last week\u2019s departure from the CDC of the five senior scientists, it was revealed<\/a> that the federal agency responsible for vaccines had never briefed Kennedy, and that he had instead been receiving guidance from other, unnamed advisers. <\/p>\n

One of them appears to be Aseem Malhotra, a controversial British cardiologist who is a senior medical adviser to the RFK Jr.-linked pressure group MAHA Action. <\/p>\n

\"RobertRobert F. Kennedy Jr. and Aseem Malhotra are close friends, having bonded over their views on public health. TheDailyBeast\/supplied <\/p>\n

A personal friend of Kennedy, Malhotra told the Daily Beast last week that the Trump administration was planning to remove the COVID mRNA vaccine from the market \u201cwithin months\u201d due to claims surrounding levels of so-called \u201cvaccine injuries,\u201d which have been disputed by the scientific community. <\/p>\n

Malhotra also revealed that in addition to RFK Jr., senior members of the Trump family\u2014none of whom have any medical qualifications\u2014were keen to see the vaccine banned.<\/p>\n

Houry told the Beast there had been concerns among her and her CDC colleagues about who precisely they believed Kennedy had been taking guidance from. <\/p>\n

She said: \u201cI think the Children\u2019s Health Defense is probably advising him, because Lyn Redwood, who [works for] HHS now, [is its] president emeritus. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe [would] get questions sometimes from the department around different vaccine type[s]. And then we would look and see that the Children\u2019s Health Defense had recently done a blog on something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s Health Defense has a history of using social media and digital advertising to spread anti-vaccination messages to young parents and minority communities across the United States. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it minimized the risk posed by the virus, argued that new vaccines were dangerous, and challenged public health agencies.<\/p>\n

The organization has been banned or restricted on social media multiple times for spreading misinformation, while the Center for Countering Digital Hate has flagged the body as a major driver of anti-vaccine activity online.<\/p>\n

Houry also pointed to RFK Jr. consulting \u201chealers\u201d in Texas<\/a> over the measles outbreak, adding: \u201cThey\u2019re people that used non-traditional science or medicine. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo I guess that\u2019s where, again, we\u2019ve offered to do briefings several times and have not been taken up on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Houry added: \u201cIt\u2019s highly unusual. Under the prior Trump administration, I personally had briefed the assistant secretary for health, and secretary, many times. And they usually want to hear from our experts.\u201d<\/p>\n

White House spokesman Kush Desai responded in a statement Monday, \u201cThe FDA just greenlit four new COVID-19 vaccines with the 2025-2026 formula, and COVID-19 vaccines remain available to 100 percent of Americans who want them. Instead of propagating baseless hysteria and asserting that requiring commonsense clinical safety trials are somehow undermining vaccines, Fake News reporters should try finding a new line of work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Daily Beast has contacted the HHS and Children\u2019s Health Defense for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most senior official to quit the CDC in protest at the firing of its director has warned…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":191951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[107313,16460,17993,1605,50,15010,67,132,68,2857],"class_list":{"0":"post-191950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-anti-vaxxers","10":"tag-cdc","11":"tag-centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention","12":"tag-donald-trump-jr","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-robert-f-kennedy-jr","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-vaccines"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115130134201612095","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}