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Back in September 2023, Joe Biden announced a new team to lead the White House’s national monkeypox response. Biden named Dr. Demetre Daskalakis as the White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator. Demetre Daskalakis Instagram On Wednesday Dr. Daskalakis turned in his resignation at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His resignation came hours after news broke that CDC Director Susan Monarez was ousted from the agency. His resignation comes on the same day that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a slew of changes to limit access to the COVID-19 vaccine. On Wednesday...

Monkey Pox Dr. Demetre Daskalakis Back in September 2023, Joe Biden announced a new team to lead the White House’s national monkeypox response. Biden named Dr. Demetre Daskalakis as the White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator. Demetre Daskalakis Instagram On Wednesday Dr. Daskalakis turned in his resignation at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His resignation came hours after news broke that CDC Director Susan Monarez was ousted from the agency. His resignation comes on the same day that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a slew of changes to limit access to...

At least three senior CDC officials resigned on Wednesday after Dr. Susan Moranez was ousted as the CDC Director. According to The Washington Post, Monarez departed the CDC over RFK Jr.’s push to change vaccine policy. Following the departure of Dr. Monarez, three senior CDC officials resigned per The Hill and PBS: Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, and CDC Chief Medical Officer Deb Houry. The Hill reported: At least three top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired less than a month on the job. CNN and The Washington Post and The Hill confirmed Dr. Monarez has been ousted. Details of Monarez’s departure from the CDC are not immediately available. The Hill reported: Susan Monarez, the longtime government scientist recently confirmed as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has been let go from her position after less than a month in the role. A source familiar with the situation confirmed to The Hill that Monarez is ousted as CDC director. The Senate confirmed her on July 29. The...

For the first time in 30 years, the American Academy of Pediatrics is substantially diverging from U.S. government vaccine recommendations. The group’s new COVID-19 recommendations — released Tuesday — come amid a tumultuous year for public health, as vaccine skeptics have come into power in the new Trump administration and government guidance has become increasingly confusing. This isn't going to help, acknowledged Dr. James Campbell, vice chair of the AAP infectious disease committee. “It is going to be somewhat confusing. But our opinion is we need to make the right choices for children to protect them,” he added. The AAP...

The permanent cuts include about 100 people who worked in violence prevention. At least 600 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are receiving permanent termination notices in the wake of a recent court decision that protected some CDC employees from layoffs but not others. The notices went out this week and many people have not yet received them, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 2,000 dues-paying members at CDC. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday did not offer details on the layoffs and referred an AP reporter...

A week ago, on Aug. 8, a gunman attacked the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, firing nearly 500 rounds, breaking about 150 windows, and killing a police officer. The shooter had reportedly become fixated on his belief that the Covid-19 vaccine had made him and others sick, and wanted to make “the public aware of his discontent,” according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Were it not for the blast-reinforced glass, campus security, and a considerable amount of luck, Aug. 8 would almost certainly have been the deadliest attack against health workers in world history. The vast majority of Americans who...

New CDC director also backed a new option for infant immunization against RSVHHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month quietly endorsed recommendationsopens in a new tab or window from his handpickedopens in a new tab or window vaccine advisors that everyone in the U.S. ages 6 months and older receive a flu shot for the upcoming season. The backdated notice appeared this week on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices' (ACIP) recommendationsopens in a new tab or window page without fanfare -- a contrast to Kennedy's July announcementopens in a new tab or window endorsing the removal of thimerosal...

The U.S. Senate voted… along party lines, 51 to 47, to confirm Susan Monarez as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Monarez has been serving as the acting head of the CDC since January, and previously worked as the head of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. At her confirmation hearing before the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) committee on July 9, Monarez garnered praise from the Republican chairman, Sen. Bill Cassidy, who is a physician, for her commitment to rebuilding public trust in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Democratic Sen....

The shooter opened fire outside the CDC headquarters, striking windows across the sprawling campus and killing the officer before he was found dead.The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has identified the man who opened fire at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White of Kennesaw, Georgia. The GBI statement says White died and Officer David Rose with the DeKalb County Police Department was shot and killed during the shooting Friday. The shooter opened fire outside the CDC headquarters, striking windows across the sprawling campus and killing the officer before he was found dead in a...

Agency may have been the target of shooter who blamed his illness on COVID shotsA gunman opened fire on the CDC campus in Atlanta on Friday evening, and the shooter and a police officer are dead, according to authorities. Sources inside the CDC shared images with MedPage Today showing multiple windows with bullet holes that appeared to be in different rooms, on various floors. CNN reportedopens in a new tab or window that the CDC may have been the target of the shooter. Police think the shooter believed he was sick due to the COVID vaccine, the outlet reported. During...

A mosquito-borne virus that leaves victims in crippling pain and has triggered Covid-era restrictions in China is already in the US, experts say.Chikungunya virus can cause sudden, agonizing joint pain in the hands and feet, sometimes so severe that it leaves sufferers unable to move normally for months.Southern China is currently battling its largest outbreak since at least 2008, with more than 7,000 cases recorded in Foshan, at the epicenter, and infections in 12 other major cities. Heavy rains and warm weather have fueled a surge in mosquitoes, driving the outbreak.Dr Louisa Messenger, a mosquito researcher in Nevada, told the...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's top vaccine official, Vinay Prasad, has left the agency after just three months as Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, a government spokesperson said. Prasad, an oncologist who was a fierce critic of U.S. COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates, had been appointed in May by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. Together they had promised to speed regulatory action and pilot new review pathways. In recent days, criticism of Prasad's tenure has intensified around the agency's handling of a gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy from Sarepta Therapeutics (SRPT.O), opens new tab. The...

Rather than extending lifespan, daily multivitamin use is linked to a 4 percent higher risk of death, according to a large study of healthy U.S. adults conducted by the National Cancer Institute.The 2024 study challenges the common belief that multivitamins improve health and longevity, even as nearly one in three U.S. adults takes them with those hopes in mind.About the StudyLed by Dr. Erikka Loftfield, the study published in JAMA Network Open, sheds light on the effects of multivitamin (MV) use on longevity and questions the benefits of these popular supplements.Drawing data from three extensive cohort studies, the research followed...

“I wear no tin-foil hat. I’m asking for the ability to officially document what happened to me.” Three and a half years ago I contracted Guillain Barre Syndrome after getting the Jansen-J&J viral vector vaccine for COVID-19. The neurological disorder has left me hobbled by numb hands and feet, staggering around imbalanced, and battling debilitating fatigue. It has also left me, and thousands of others, feeling ignored and unheard by the government and the public health establishment. I wrote about the experience in 2021 in The Boston Globe, after the FDA attached a warning to the J&J shot, citing an...

Trump administration policy tug-of-war between big medical groups that want COVID vaccines back on CDC schedule for healthy kids and pregnant women, groups that want mandate ban extended to health sciences students. The Trump administration is getting pulled in opposite directions on its COVID-19 vaccine policy, sued by mainstream American medical associations for removing jab recommendations for healthy children and healthy pregnant women and pressured by jab opponents to further restrict the novel therapeutics, which continue to be mandated in some settings. Now public health officials are faced with new evidence the jabs accelerate the cancer with the third-most deaths...

It’s common sense: Local challenges should be confronted and solved locally whenever possible. Protecting Americans’ health is no exception. Yet few realize that the World Health Organization still exerts influence over American health care, even as the United States has taken steps to separate from it. Earlier this year, a presidential executive order initiated the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO, citing concerns that the organization prioritizes politics over science and public accountability. There is no question that leaving the WHO was and still is an important step forward for American patients, but there is much more work...

World-renowned infectious-disease epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff — who was fired from Harvard Medical School last year after refusing the COVID vaccine — just got a new gig. Kulldorff has been named a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices. Kulldorff, who had refused the COVID vaccine because of his infection-acquired immunity, lost his appointment at a Harvard-affiliated hospital in the early days of the COVID era, and in March of 2024 was officially terminated as a med school faculty member. Since the COVID lockdowns began five years ago, Kulldorff argued that tactics such as...

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday that he was removing the entire membership of the influential vaccine advisory panel that makes immunization recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy said he was making the unprecedented move to retire the 17 independent vaccine experts from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices because the panel has been “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and has become a “rubber stamp” for vaccines. Kennedy has long criticized the panel, which makes vaccine recommendations to the CDC director....

Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, a pediatric infectious disease expert and top CDC official, resigned on Tuesday as co-leader of the agency’s group that oversees updates to COVID-19 jab recommendations. Reuters first reported her resignation. This is the start to a great Birthday!!🎂 CDC official overseeing COVID-19 vaccine recommendations resigns – CBS News https://t.co/bNn66H01Cg — Brian Tyson, MD 🇺🇸 (@btysonmd) June 4, 2025 Per Reuters: Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to work group colleagues that her decision to step down was based on the belief she is “no longer able to help the most vulnerable members” of the U.S. population. In her...