US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has been given until 2 September to stop spreading anti-vaccine information by hundreds of current and former staff members from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the HHS.

In a letter released by “Save HHS” on Wednesday, over 750 staff – about half of whom opted to remain anonymous – say that they are gravely concerned about “America’s health and safety” following an attack on the CDC early this month, when a man opposed to COVID-19 vaccines fired hundreds of bullets at the institution. A police officer was killed in the attack.

“The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicised rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization – and now, violence,” according to the letter, which has been sent to Kennedy and Members of the US Congress.

Lukewarm response to CDC gunman

In a media release accompanying the letter, the staff described Kennedy’s response to the shooting as “delayed and cursory”. He also “failed to take accountability for his role in the denigration of HHS employees and his decades of anti-vaccine rhetoric that reportedly contributed to the shooter’s motives”.

In an interview shortly after the attack, Kennedy criticised the CDC’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The staff accuse Kennedy of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information”.

They say he has sown public mistrust, including by calling the CDC a “cesspool of corruption”, falsely claiming mRNA vaccines “failed to protect effectively” during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently cancelling $500 million in contracts for mRNA vaccine development, “possibly our best line of defence against another respiratory virus pandemic”.

They also cite his disbanding of the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) as part of his anti-vaccine activity.

They also accuse the health secretary of falsely claiming the measles vaccine has not been “safety tested” and that protection “wanes very quickly” while “promoting inappropriate prevention measures like vitamin A even as US measles case numbers are at their highest in more than 30 years”.

Finally, they say Kennedy has misused data to “falsely claim childhood vaccines are the cause of autism despite decades of research demonstrating otherwise”.

‘Dangerous and deceitful’

Describing these Kennedy statements as “dangerous and deceitful”, the letter gives the HHS Secretary until 2 September to “cease and publicly disavow the ongoing dissemination of false and misleading claims about vaccines, infectious disease transmission, and America’s public health institutions”.

It also asks him “acknowledge and affirm that CDC’s work is rooted in scientific, non-partisan evidence focused on improving the health of every American” and “guarantee the safety of the HHS workforce”.

Dr Anne Schuchat, former Principal Deputy Director of CDC, said that “an attack on a U.S. government agency should be a moment in time when we come together”. 

“Instead, Secretary Kennedy continues to spread misinformation at the risk of American lives,” she added.

Dr Ian Morgan, an NIH scientist and steward of NIH Fellows United, said that the attack on the CDC  on the death of the police officer should have been a “wake-up call” for Kennedy and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya.

“Yet, we’ve seen them persist in the same antivaccine and anti-science rhetoric that led to the shooting, endangering the lives of HHS workers and the American public. This dangerous rhetoric from HHS leaders must stop,” said Morgan.

Neither Kennedy nor the HHS had responded to the letter by the time of publication.