Some 750 federal health employees signed the letter two weeks after a gunman fired 180 bullets into CDC buildings.
Hundreds of federal health employees have written to United States Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, imploring him to “stop spreading inaccurate health information”, weeks after a gunman fired hundreds of bullets into the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
Signatories to the letter on Wednesday, including hundreds of current HHS staff, accused Kennedy of “sowing public mistrust by questioning the integrity and morality of CDC’s workforce”, including by calling the public health agency a “cesspool of corruption”, during his 2024 failed presidential election campaign.
They also said that Kennedy’s policies, including cuts to thousands of HHS employees, were creating “dangerous gaps in areas like infectious diseases detection, worker safety, and chronic disease prevention and response”.
“The deliberate destruction of trust in America’s public health workforce puts lives at risk,” the workers said, noting that Kennedy had spread false claims about the measles vaccine, undermining the public health outbreak response to the disease.
