Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned last week as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, has sounded a dire alarm about the future of U.S. public health under vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“We’re seeing the tip of the iceberg” in terms of the vaccines that will be targeted, Daskalakis told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
Daskalakis pointed to a new policy direction suggesting that only children with underlying conditions should qualify for the COVID-19 vaccine, a move he said flies in the face of established data.
“From my vantage point as a doctor who’s taken the Hippocratic oath, I only see harm coming,” he warned.
Daskalakis said he fears the new Kennedy-stacked Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices is moving in “an ideologic direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination.”
“They do want to see the undoing of mRNA vaccination,” he cautioned. “They have a very specific target on COVID but I do fear that they have other things they are going to be working on.”
When asked if he worried that his departure — along with other recent resignations and firings at the CDC — would harm U.S. public health, Daskalakis replied: “Of course I’m worried. I’ve been worried for months.”
Daskalakis said he reached the breaking point when “the firewall between science and ideology has completely broken down,” leaving him and his colleagues unable to do their jobs.
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Watch the full interview here: