Ousted CDC Director to Testify to Senate

The first Senate-confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will testify before senators about the events leading up to her termination.

Susan Monarez is scheduled to testify to the Senate Health Committee on Sept. 17.

Monarez was the first CDC director in history to receive Senate confirmation, following a change in the law that took effect earlier this year. She was sworn in on July 31. She was fired on Aug. 27.

“To protect children’s health, Americans need to know what has happened and is happening at the CDC. They need to be reassured that their child’s health is given priority. Radical transparency is the only way to do that,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said in a statement.

The White House has said that Monarez was removed because she was not aligned with the Make America Healthy Again agenda promoted by President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose department includes the CDC.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Monarez wrote that she was told during a meeting with Kennedy to preapprove recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the CDC on vaccines.

“The CDC can’t fulfill its obligation to the American people if its leader can’t demand proof in decision-making. If discarding evidence for ideology becomes the norm, why should parents, physicians or the public trust the CDC’s guidance?” she wrote.

Kennedy told Cassidy and other senators during a Senate Finance Committee hearing that Monarez’s allegation was not true. He said that he heard Monarez had committed to not approving any recommendations from ACIP, and that he asked her to clarify that she would consider advice from the panel.

Kennedy also said that he told Monarez to resign because he asked her whether she was a trustworthy person “and she said ‘no.’”

The Sept. 17 hearing is slated to take place one day before ACIP convenes in Atlanta, the site of the CDC’s headquarters, to discuss multiple vaccines and possibly vote on changing recommendations for them.

Two witnesses are listed for the hearing: Monarez and Dr. Debra Houry, one of several CDC officials who resigned after Monarez’s termination.

Houry said after she resigned that Monarez had attempted to make public documents related to ACIP, and that leadership blocked those attempts. “For us, we knew that if our scientific leader couldn’t make changes like that, we could no longer stay,” Houry said.

A spokesperson for the committee told The Epoch Times in an email that the panel is planning to invite Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials to testify at a future hearing.

Cassidy previously called for the ACIP meeting to be delayed “until significant oversight” regarding the CDC changes took place. HHS has given no indication of delaying the ACIP meeting.

“If the meeting proceeds,” Cassidy said in late August, “any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy.”

HHS did not respond to a request for comment.