RFK Jr. denies pressuring ousted CDC director to preapprove vaccine changes

Washington — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday denied that he pressured the ousted director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to preapprove vaccination recommendations from a panel he overhauled before her firing.

Susan Monarez was fired from the position less than a month after her Senate confirmation. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Monarez said that Kennedy "pressured me to resign or face termination" in an Aug. 25 meeting.

"One of the troubling directives from that meeting more than a week ago: I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric," she wrote.

The piece was published shortly before Kennedy testified before the Senate Finance Committee, where he faced tough questioning about his vaccine policies.

"I did not say that to her," Kennedy told Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. "I never had a private meeting with her. Other witnesses to every meeting that we have, and all those witnesses will say, I never said that."

"So she's lying today to the American people in the Wall Street Journal?" Wyden asked.

"Yes, sir," Kennedy said.

Later, Kennedy told Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia that he did not demand Monarez accept the recommendations of the panel without further review from career scientists at the CDC.

"I told her I didn't want her to have a rule that she's not going to sign onto it," Kennedy said when asked whether he told Monarez to accept the recommendations.

At another point in the hearing, Kennedy claimed he asked Monarez to resign "because I asked her, 'Are you a trustworthy person?' and she said no."

In June, Kennedy removed every member of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, a government panel that makes vaccine recommendations. At the time, he asserted that it "has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine." He then named several members to the panel, including vaccine skeptics, circumventing the usual CDC practice of selecting medical and public health experts.

The newly constituted ACIP is set to meet later this month to consider vaccine recommendations. In her op-ed, Monarez wrote that "[i]t is imperative that the panel's recommendations aren't rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected."

After Monarez's firing, several other top CDC officials resigned, citing the Trump administration's stance on vaccines, which they found troubling, and budget cuts.