“I’m Really Scared” Vaccine Doctor Quits CDC After RFK Jr.’s Committee Purge

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And now, in the United States, the new and controversial CDC vaccine panel held its first meeting today. Health Secretary RFK Jr. had axed the nation’s decades old vaccine advisory panel after telling Congress during his nomination that he never would. And this prompted our next guest to up and quit the CDC. Dr. Fiona Havers led the agency’s hospitalization network for COVID, RSV, and the flu. And at a time when vaccine uptake rates are falling nationwide, Havers says that lives now are being put at risk. She speaks to Michel Martin about the stakes for the future of America’s health.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Dr. Fiona Havers, thanks so much for joining us.

DR. FIONA HAVERS, FORMER MEDICAL EPIDEMIOLOGIST, CDC: Thank you very much for having me on the show.

MARTIN: Dr. Havers, one of the reasons we came to you are a noted authority in your field. I’ll just sort of establish that. And your field has become newly prominent in recent years, as I think we all know because of the COVID vaccine, you know, pandemic. And you announced your resignation just ahead of a — what was scheduled a major CDC vaccine advisory meeting. And that’s not an easy thing to do. So, could you just walk us through the days or the moments that kind of led you to that decision?

DR. HAVERS: Sure. So, I resigned my position at CDC basically to protest RFK Jr.’s interference in the CDC vaccine policy process. And there were a number of events that led up to this, to my decision to resign. I think in general, CDC has had a really hard time in this administration for the last six months. You know, this administration has basically taken a sledgehammer to the agency and to public health. So, it was on that background that these events started happening that really affected the space where I work in, which is vaccine preventable diseases. And what I saw happening was RFK Jr. was now using the levers of government power to potentially block access to life-saving vaccines for Americans. And specifically, for me it really started I think on May 20th when the FDA, Makary, the political appointee, who’s now heading the FDA and Vinayak Prasad released a video and editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine called an Evidence-Based Approach to COVID-19 vaccination. In there they sort of released a framework that was basically indicating that COVID vaccines were going to be paired back for the American people. And some of that is OK. I mean, CDC was sort of moving in that direction for certain groups. But in the YouTube video he put up Vinayak Prasad, who’s talking about evidence-based medicine, put up data from the system that I ran. It’s called COVID-Net. And put up hospitalization rates for zero to four year olds as — but — so, he was using evidence from the system that I oversaw, but he was using it badly. Because within that age group, there’s a lot of nuance that’s actually really important for actually having true science-based evidence- based policy. And so, that was problematic, but it was not nearly as problematic as what happened the following week when RFK Jr. went on X and announced that CDC recommendations were changing for COVID vaccines. Nobody from CDC who does COVID vaccine policy was involved in that decision or that announcement. And what he announced and the changes they had announced completely undercut the very rigorous, very science-based like process that CDC has from making official changes to the CDC recommendations. And that was just — I mean, we were all appalled, frankly. And I nearly quit that week. But then, there was some pushback from within CDC leadership. I think. I wasn’t part of those conversations directly. And what ended up being officially on this schedule wasn’t as bad is what RFK Jr. announced and it sort of preserved access to vaccines for more children.

MARTIN: What’s an analogy that might make sense to somebody who hasn’t really thought about it? Can you think of an analogy or something that might make sense to people?

DR. HAVERS: I think that he just blew up the entire process. Every type of vaccine has its own work group. These are outside experts who are vetted for conflicts of interest, and they meet behind the scenes for hours, often for two hours every week, and they do a deep dive into the evidence. After the work groups have finished their work and have a recommendation, they take it to the public — at the public meeting, they present it in a very transparent way to the advisory committee. At those public meetings, which happen three times a year, the evidence upon which any vaccine recommendation change is based is viewed publicly and the ACIP members vote on it. Then the CDC director just usually just signs off like that week, a week or two later and becomes official CDC policy. So, they — by him just announcing CDC was changing recommendations on X without talking to CDC, bypass that entire transparent evidence-based policy.

MARTIN: In your resignation e-mail to colleagues, you wrote that you, quote, “no longer have confidence that these data will be used objectively or evaluated with appropriate scientific rigor to make evidence-based vaccine policy decisions.” It’s pretty straightforward. But what I’m hearing from you is this is like four-alarm fire to you. This is not, gee, I don’t think you know that they’re really listening to me. I think what you’re saying is this is four-alarm fire time. That you have no idea who’s actually influencing these decisions. You have no idea what information is informing these decisions. And if you don’t mind my saying, this is not scientific language, you’re really scared. You’re scared about what’s going to happen.

DR. HAVERS: Well, I am really scared. I honestly, really am. And I will say that, as I mentioned, I didn’t quit at that moment when he made the announcement on X, that CDC was changing it. The moment I knew I had to resign was when my colleague texted me and said, he just announced, he fired the entire committee. That was RFK Jr. going nuclear on CDC, and on this entire vaccine policy process. And it was — at that moment I felt completely gutted. Honestly. I was like, I was done. Like I knew that I could not stay. And I — at that point, I just felt like, you know, whoever he’s putting in is not going to take the science seriously. They’re not going to use the evidence that we spend our careers putting — collecting, and putting together for — to make informed decisions. And I did not feel like, as a scientist, as a physician, that, for my own personal integrity, that I could stay and like legitimize that process by presenting to this committee.

MARTIN: He fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel. And on June 9th when he announced this, he said, today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro or anti-vaccine agenda. How do you hear that framing?

DR. HAVERS: I mean, first of all, RFK Jr. has been — wanted the leading figures for decades undermining public trust in this process, in this very rigorous, very transparent process. I’ll also say, I mean, me personally, I have never had any times ties to the vaccine industry. I have no conflicts of interest here. I’m a physician. I’ve seen people die of vaccine preventable diseases. That is what motivates me, like, helping to prevent that and helping to prevent people dying unnecessarily is really my motivation. And I also know many of the members who are — the CIP that were fired personally as well, and I think they are people of integrity. Their conflicts of interest are very much vetted. And for him to just keep saying that CDC is conflicted, this group is conflicted and they have other interests other than the, you know, public health good is really hard to hear, especially when he’s been one of the main voices for undermining public trust in vaccines and in CDC.

MARTIN: And I can say that there has other reporting that indicates that some of the instances that he cited of so-called conflicts of interest were clerical errors or, you know, coding errors and filling out the forms. There is ample evidence that there — that, as you said, the members of this panel have been vetted for conflicts.

DR. HAVERS: I mean, I will say I was a work group lead for — I was the ACIP work group lead for pertussis vaccines before the pandemic. And I’ve been on many meetings where work group members have had to recuse themselves or be removed from the work group because they got a new grant and they didn’t want to have any appearance of conflict. I have seen ACIP members resign because of similar things where they have — so something — some research coming in so that they’re no longer being viewed as completely objective. So, they’re — and it’s such a rigorous process. And CDC has been very careful to make this even more of a rigorous and transparent process over the last two decades because we understand that it’s really important for the public to be able to trust what CDC says.

MARTIN: And by contrast, some of the new appointees that Secretary Kennedy have — has announced have a track record of vaccine skepticism. Does this speak to some larger battle that seems to be sort of playing out here? I’m just kind of wondering what’s the origin of it? Is it the idea that credentials, as we have understood them, relevant experience of — as we have understood, it earned authority as we have understood it is no longer relevant in the current era and something else is?

DR. HAVERS: I mean, I do think that there is a larger conversation going on in America about the role of expertise in specific areas. But I would say, to bring it back to the vaccine policy part, is that, you know, RFK Jr. has been — you know, his positions on vaccines are well known, but now what he’s doing is potentially affecting insurance coverage and access to vaccines for Americans. And the reason why this process is so important and why the CDC immunization schedule matters is because if it is officially on the CDC schedule, insurance by law is required to cover it. So, if he’s just making changes unilaterally or he has these other people now controlling this process, if they remove — if they change the recommendations and remove vaccines, people will not be able to get their vaccines covered by insurance even if they want to get them. And the other part of it is it ACIP is critical because it determines what’s on the Vaccine for Children’s — in the Vaccine for Children’s program, which is a federal program that provides free vaccines to millions of children across the country. And now, if they are starting to — if ACIP, the people that are currently now newly on the committee start restricting what vaccines are recommended to go in that program, children are going to lose access to lifesaving vaccines.

MARTIN: So, what I think I hear you saying is, even if Secretary Kennedy says that he’s not trying to push the country or parents specifically in one direction or another, that effectively, the results are pushing them in one direction for another because people might not be able to get insurance coverage for vaccines that they consider to be critical, that the science indicates are critical and that people who are under-resourced may not have access, even if they can — if they can’t pay out of pocket, they’re not going to have access is —

DR. HAVERS: No, exactly. And the other thing is this, it’s going to get way more confusing for healthcare providers, for patients if the CDC immunization schedule is no longer reliable and really based on science, because also part of the process, one important part of the process that I didn’t mention is that all the academic or professional societies weigh in and usually endorse changes to the CDC schedule, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Nurse Midwives, the American College of Physicians. And so, you know, I’ve been in clinic where I have a patient sitting in front of me and I need to know, does this patient need a meningococcal vaccine? And I — you know, all providers basically go to the CDC immunization schedule for like a quick reference. And I know that that’s reliable information. And if that changes, it’s going to be a lot harder for clinicians and for patients to know what should — what they should get. And then, if they want to get a vaccine and the doctor thinks they should get it, they may not have access to it.

MARTIN: Are there any diseases or any particular populations that you’re particularly concerned about?

DR. HAVERS: I mean, I think that this is a five-alarm fire, but like two children have died of measles since RFK took over as HHS secretary. And I know that me and all the pediatricians I know are worried about more measles outbreaks, more deaths in children from measles. Pertussis or whooping cough has also been on the increase. And I worked on pertussis for a while at CDC also, and we will see more babies die of pertussis if this happens. The other thing that a population I’m — my background is in internal medicine and infectious diseases. So, I take care of a lot of older adults. But influenza and COVID-19 results in the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans every single year, and most of them are older adults. And I do think that if there is increased confusion about the value or which — for influenza and COVID-19 vaccines in older adults, or if there’s decreased access and older adults can’t get their flu shot, or can’t get their COVID shot, we will see a large increase in serious illness and deaths in the older adult population. So, I think — I mean, if this keeps going away the way it’s going, I mean it, the situation can get really bad and parents are going to have to worry

about diseases that nobody has thought about in decades or — I mean, it’s really very scary.

MARTIN: Do you think, well, presumably if, if, you know – and it is scary to think about – if, if you think if the deaths start to increase, presumably that would create some public pressure to rethink this. But then now the question I have, since you are worried that the sort of data collection and analysis processes are being corrupted, will we even know? Except by word of mouth?

DR. HAVERS: I think currently, the data collection processes at CDC, the processes where – the systems like the one that I oversaw as of a week ago that are collecting the data and tracking, like, how much COVID and flu are out there, those have not yet been corrupted. I have no reason to think that. So I think that the data coming out of CDC is still reliable. It’s just the people making decisions based on that data and the policy that comes out of that data, I, you know, whether or not they use the data to make policy decisions is the, what I’m currently concerned about. I mean I was scheduled to present the COVID epidemiology talk at this upcoming meeting, and I think, I think one of my colleagues is gonna be giving those talks. And if those data are presented, those data can be believed, if they’re presented by career CDC folks, like they are trustworthy, they are honestly, they’re brilliant, they’re great, they’re heroes. If they are non-career CDC people presenting data that is – gets, I would be more concerned about that. But I think, you know, I specifically resigned over the interference in vaccine policy, but I think more broadly, public health in America is under attack. And the basic core functions of CDC of tracking different metrics of the health, for the health of America and like what diseases are out there, how much is it who’s dying, what are the risk factors those are all in danger if we, if this administration continues to undermine public health and CDC.

MARTIN: You know, according to the National Cancer Institute, just 57.3 percent of adolescents age 13 to 15 were fully vaccinated against HPV, this is in 2023, which is well below the 80 percent target set by the Department of Health and Human Services as part of its national public health goals for the decade. And the reason I raise that is that this predates Secretary Kennedy taking office. It predates the Trump administration coming into private. So, I guess what I’m saying is, it seems to me that there’s this skepticism was brewing before they arrived at these agencies, and I just wondered if you have a theory about why that is.

DR. HAVERS: I mean, vaccine skepticism has been increasing for the last several decades, and it’s something that people at CDC are very well aware of. And I think, you know, RFK Jr. has been one of the loudest voices to fueling that. And now, he’s in a position of government power and using that to even further spread even further more misinformation. You mentioned the HPV vaccine, and this is not an area of expertise that I have, but I do know that it’s one of the huge public health wins. This is a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. And if girls don’t get vaccinated during a certain window of opportunity, that puts them potentially at a lifetime risk of cervical cancer that would be eliminated had they been vaccinated. And to see vaccination rates drop for a safe and effective vaccine can potentially prevent like your daughter dying from cancer later, like it really bothers me that kind of misinformation is out there, because it is costing lives.

MARTIN: What message do you want people to draw from this conversation?

DR. HAVERS: CDC had a very rigorous, transparent, science-based, evidence-based policy. People at CDC were working very hard to have good evidence-based recommendations and working with all of our partners across medicine and public health to do this. RFK Junior has taken a sledgehammer to this process and is using his position as HHS secretary to disrupt it. And if we don’t walk this back very soon, more Americans are gonna die from vaccine preventable deaths for all the reasons that I said. And I think it’s, honestly, it’s very scary and I think people should be concerned about this.

MARTIN: Dr. Fiona Havers, thank you so much for speaking with us.

DR. HAVERS: Thank you very much for having me. Appreciate it.