In an open letter, Health and Human Services employees asked the Secretary to stop and disavow the spread of health misinformation, particularly about vaccines, infectious diseases and federal health agencies.
Over 750 current and former employees at the Department of Health and Human Services are calling on Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to tone down what they characterized as “dangerous and deceitful statements” that have fostered distrust against federal health workers, exposing them to physical harm.
“The violent August 8th attack on CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta was not random,” staff wrote in an open letter published Wednesday, referring to the shooting earlier this month at the agency’s main campus when nearly 200 bullets were fired into CDC buildings. One police officer died in the attack. The gunman, 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White, took his own life after the incident.
“The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization—and now, violence,” according to the letter, which was addressed to Kennedy himself and members of U.S. Congress.
Kennedy, the letter continued, is “complicit” in this erosion of public trust “by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information.” The secretary has, for instance, “falsely attributed” autism to childhood vaccination despite decades of research disproving this link. Kennedy has also mistakenly claimed that mRNA vaccines aren’t protective against COVID-19, even pulling back some $500 million in funding for related research, according to the letter.
Kennedy’s rhetoric has even sometimes painted federal workers as the enemy, with Wednesday’s open letter noting that he has previously called the CDC a “cesspool of corruption.”
These statements have “contributed to the harassment and violence experienced by CDC staff,” the employees claimed. To keep the federal health workforce safe, the letter outlined three main requests: that Kennedy “stop spreading inaccurate health information” and publicly disavow the spread of misleading information about vaccines, infectious diseases and federal health agencies; acknowledge that the CDC’s work is “rooted in scientific, non-partisan evidence” with the goal of improving the health of Americans; and provide more concrete guarantees of their safety, such as functional alerts and emergency protocols. The letter also calls for the removal of “high-profile online material targeting the federal workforce such as the widely seen ‘DEI watchlists.’”
In a statement to Endpoints News, a spokesperson for HHS pushed back on the open letter, saying that “any attempt to conflate widely supported public health reforms with the violence of a suicidal mass shooter is an attempt to politicize a tragedy.”
