#jfk-junior — Public Fediverse posts

Exclusive: ex-CDC director talks about why she was fired – Nature

“I would never do that, as a scientist,” Susan Monarez says of being asked to approve changes to vaccine recommendations without knowing the details.

When Susan Monarez took the helm of the beleaguered US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in late July, she had her work cut out for her. Public trust in the agency had dropped considerably since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. And US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who oversees the CDC, had called the agency a “cesspool of corruption” that needed to be fundamentally rebuilt.

Less than a month into Monarez’s tenure, US President Donald Trump fired her. She had lost the trust of Kennedy, who only a month earlier had said he had “full confidence” in her ability to lead the agency and that she had “unimpeachable scientific credentials”.

This conflict spilled into public view when each presented their version of events to US senators at separate hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Monarez was dismissed, she said, for refusing to fire top scientists at the agency or pre-approve vaccine recommendations without first considering the relevant scientific data. Kennedy testified that Monarez had told him that she wasn’t trustworthy, so he ousted her.

Kennedy had also told Monarez that CDC employees were “killing children and they don’t care”, were “bought by the pharmaceutical industry” and “forced people to wear masks and social distance like a dictatorship”, she testified. These alleged comments came after a deadly shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, soon after she became director. The gunman, who targeted the campus to protest COVID-19 vaccines, killed police officer David Rose and shattered some 150 windows.

The past few months, Monarez says, have included both “the highlights of my professional career” and the “absolute worst days of my life”. In an exclusive interview — her first since she became CDC director — she tells Nature about the consequential decisions that cost her the job and what’s next for public health in a politicized world.

The CDC director is an “inherently political position, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be politically compromised”, says Monarez, who is an immunologist and microbiologist. “The CDC is far too important to just give up on.”

Before our call, you sent me a photo that seems to be of you as a child with your father and siblings sitting on a tractor with a barn in the background. What was that about?

I grew up in rural America, in a family that didn’t have many resources — my dad was a dairy farmer. You live without expecting to have the privileges and material possessions that so many people have. We just knew that you worked hard. You got up early and you treated people with kindness. We lived at or below the poverty line for a long time.

My parents, they’re still alive, thankfully. But they’ve never been wealthy, and they don’t have the advantages of immediate access to high-quality health care, and so I see them still struggling today. When we’re talking in Washington DC, we have to remember that there are millions and millions of Americans like my parents. We can’t leave them behind.

Editor’s Note: The featured image was created by SORA. WP AI refused to make an image based on the article; seems likely just censorship, I wonder. –DrWeb

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Exclusive: ex-CDC director talks about why she was fired

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How stripping diversity, equity and inclusion from health care may make Americans sicker – The Conversation

Academic rigor, journalistic flair

The Trump administration has rescinded more than $1 billion in medical research funding, with one major target being research relating to diversity, equity and inclusion. Alina Kotliar / iStock via Getty Images Plus

How stripping diversity, equity and inclusion from health care may make Americans sicker

Published: August 27, 2025 8:01am EDTa

Editor’s Note: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion = DEI.

Authors

1. Abigail Folberg Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Nebraska Omaha
2. Brittany Givens Rassoolkhani Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Kentucky

Disclosure statement

Abigail Folberg receives funding from the National Science Foundation. This article reflects her views and does not necessarily represent the views of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Brittany Givens Rassoolkhani receives funding from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. This article reflects her views and does not necessarily represent the views of the University of Kentucky.

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President Donald Trump’s administration has dramatically reshaped health and medical research by rolling back federal funding from institutions that have diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and by cutting federal funding for research projects that the administration considers related to DEI.

As of Aug. 20, 2025, the National Institutes of Health has terminated over 5,100 grants totaling over US$4.4 billion in research funding. Likewise, the National Science Foundation, which seeks among other things to advance the nation’s health, has rescinded over 1,700 research grants totaling over $1 billion in funding.

These terminations have disproportionately affected projects that study the experiences of marginalized groups and funding to scientists from social groups that are underrepresented in academia. The federal judge overseeing a case challenging cuts to NIH grants said that he had “never seen government racial discrimination like this.”

Many Americans may view these cuts to health-related research as disconnected from the health care they receive. However, as a psychologist and a chemical engineer who study how gender and racial inequality affect well-being and the incidence and progression of disease, we believe that these changes will make all Americans less healthy.

Health repercussions for minority groups

The Trump administration’s funding cuts will most directly affect the health of members of marginalized groups, including, but not limited to, people of color, women and people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex and transgender. The website grant.witness.us includes a list of the project descriptions of canceled grants. The NIH grants that were terminated include ones that funded research investigating the effects of food insecurity and stress on prenatal and birth outcomes among women of color, sex differences in major depression, and risk factors for suicidal behavior among gender minority adolescents.

The White House has also indicated that it intends to ax the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which funds research on groups that tend to have poorer health outcomes, in its planned reorganization of the NIH.

These cuts will likely make these groups’ health outcomes worse. One of the reasons for these health disparities is that the health experiences and outcomes of members of marginalized social groups, such as women of color, have historically received less attention. Health disparities cannot be closed without high-quality research.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: How stripping diversity, equity and inclusion from health care may make Americans sicker

#2025 #America #AmericansSicker #DonaldTrump #Health #HealthResearch #History #JFKJunior #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

#JFKJunior: "let's make America healthy again".

Reality: "California resident tests positive for the plague after camping".

The plague... I knew Trumpism wants to turn back the clock, but... all the way to the 14th century? 😬
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/21/california-plague-case-south-lake-tahoe

@winnipegfreepress - Feeling Great yet, America?
#uspol #ushealthcare #jfkjunior #canada #bcpoli