A national public health organization calls for the Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign the federal post he took barely weeks ago, citing “an implicit and explicit bias and a complete contempt for science”.
Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association, said in a statement Wednesday that the concerns raised during the Kennedy confirmation hearing last month was carried out, followed by Massive staff reduction to the main health agencies.
After having presented a litany of Kennedy shares with which the group does not agree on measles, fluoridation, FDA staff and other questions, he wrote: “As a doctor, I undertook not to do any harm and to speak.
In an interview with Stat, Benjamin said he had published the Declaration on behalf of the group, following discussions with leadership and staff. The call for resignation is to the knowledge of Benjamin a first for APHA, a non -profit organization 150 years old who is the oldest and the largest association of public health professionals in the world, with tens of thousands of members. He regularly meets on politics and practice and publishes the American Journal of Public Health.
“The things he has done were not only useful, but I believe that many things he articulated have been hurtful,” Benjamin told Stat. “I think people will die because of what he does.”
The suppressions of jobs from the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and elsewhere for health and social services are “the latest example of poor and thoughtless management that will only undermine the work of the best public health agencies in our country to keep us healthy,” he said in the statement.
Stat contacted HHS to comment.
Before last week’s job cuts, Benjamin said, Kennedy had forced the Resignation of Peter MarksWho supervised the regulation of vaccines at the head of the FDA biological assessment and research center, where he was a key player in the development of the first COVVI-19 vaccine thanks to the WARP SPEED operation in the first Trump administration.
Kennedy is criticized for his response to the expanding of Texas measles epidemicIncluding its failure to encourage vaccination while promoting unproven remedies such as vitamin A, known to have had some children.
Benjamin’s declaration also lists as reasons for resignation appointing a known vaccine review To study the demystified theory connecting infant autism vaccines and plan to tell CDC not to recommend water fluoride supplies.
Kennedy’s opinions on vaccines and the response to the death of the measles of two children disturbed the direction of APHA as inappropriate and not based on evidence.
“I was very disturbed when he started to promote vitamin A and I knew there were a lot of people behind the scenes saying: don’t talk about vitamin A,” said Benjamin.
He contracted his experience as public health manager for the state of Maryland and for Washington, DC
“I know what the words of a health manager mean. I pay attention here to APHA for the same reason because you wear the mantle to be the government, the messenger of trust, and the hypothesis is that what you say has been entirely verified and is based on evidence,” he said. “I just felt as a doctor and I made my staff heard here to agree and the other leaders here to agree. We must say that this guy is the bad news. ”
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