Robert Kennedy: Right the Healthcare Ship You are Sinking or Resign

Target: Robert Kennedy, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services

Goal: Stop undermining department’s mission to safeguard public health and protect Americans from sickness and death.

Another top American health agency is in crisis mode due to the irresponsible actions of U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy. In just a few weeks’ time, around 600 employees were terminated from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): the agency responsible for spearheading the nation’s response to and prevention of dangerous illnesses. One of the people targeted for termination was the CDC director, who has vowed to fight the termination because of her deep concern about the politicization and mishandling of the center. A large number of resignations have followed, as health experts stand in solidarity.

Kennedy announced the director was being fired because she “did not align with the president’s agenda,” pointing to the political nature of this dismissal. Despite the secretary’s claims that his dismissals will make the department more “efficient” and effective, the opposite outcome is occurring. Kennedy was even forced to rehire some dismissed workers after acknowledging they were integral to the CDC’s mission of public health. Following several controversial moves – including the disbanding of a preventive medicine task force, the planned elimination of fluoride from drinking water, and the dismissal of hard scientific data and respected researchers in favor of conspiracy theories – the final straw apparently came with Kennedy’s provocative words and planned actions on vaccines. According to one source reportedly close with Kennedy, the secretary plans to eliminate COVID-19 vaccines from U.S. markets entirely, depriving millions of Americans the opportunity to protect themselves from a still-lethal disease. He has other vaccines in his sights as well and has even spoken in derogatory terms about the annual flu shot.

The secretary has claimed career employees at the CDC “shouldn’t be there,” but it is clearly the secretary himself – someone who has not a modicum of formal medical training – who needs to go. Sign the petition below to call on Secretary Kennedy to take the most beneficial step toward “Making America Healthy Again” by tendering his resignation.

PETITION LETTER:

Dear Secretary Kennedy,

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health: these agencies are some of the most consequential in the world when it comes to public health. They are staffed by people who have dedicated their lives and their livelihoods to studying, treating, and preventing the planet’s worst illnesses. The man tasked with the tremendous responsibility of leading these teams – a man who has no scientific or medical training himself – should be looking to these experts and public servants for guidance. Instead, you are dismissing them and their work in favor of flawed, widely questioned studies and conspiracy theories.

These agencies are not political tools to fulfill any president’s “agenda.” They are the first line of defense for the most regarded healthcare system in the world. Millions of Americans will suffer and perhaps die if the foundations of knowledge and respect bult over centuries crumble.

If you cannot honor and build upon this foundation, then you must resign and give someone the opportunity who can.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

Photo Credit: Department of Health and Human Services