Ousted CDC director Susan Monarez to testify at Senate committee hearing
WASHINGTON — The Senate committee that oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will hold a hearing next week with testimony from former CDC Director Susan Monarez, whom the Trump administration abruptly fired last month after she refused to resign under pressure.
The hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Bill Cassidy, R-La., will take place Sept. 17 and focus on oversight of the CDC. Dr. Debra Houry, who resigned as chief medical officer after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed Monarez, is also expected to testify, according to a committee spokesperson.
“To protect children’s health, Americans need to know what has happened and is happening at the CDC,” Cassidy said in a statement Tuesday night announcing the hearing. “They need to be reassured that their child’s health is given priority. Radical transparency is the only way to do that.”
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is scheduled to convene the next day, on Sept. 18.
In addition to Houry, other CDC resignations amid Kennedy’s efforts to reshape the vaccine advisory panel included those of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who headed the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.
Shortly after Monarez’s ouster, Cassidy, a physician who provided a key vote to confirm Kennedy as health secretary, cautioned the vaccine advisory panel against meeting until significant oversight has been conducted.
“If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.” Cassidy said in a statement last month.
Monarez wrote in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal shortly before Kennedy’s recent congressional testimony that she was dismissed after she refused his direction at an Aug. 25 meeting to preapprove recommendations for the panel, a claim Kennedy denied when he testified before the Senate Finance Committee this month.
“It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected,” Monarez wrote.
Kennedy’s hearing consisted of numerous tense exchanges with Cassidy and Democrats on the committee, with the secretary defending his vaccine stance against senators who said his policies and efforts to elevate immunization skeptics to the panel demonstrate anti-vaccine bias.
Attorneys for Monarez also criticized Kennedy’s testimony, calling his claims “false, and at times, patently ridiculous,” in a statement following the hearing.
Brennan Leach and Frank Thorp V reported from Washington and Zoë Richards from New York.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
