How RFK Jr. Is Pushing the CDC to the Brink
A small but vocal contingent has long been demanding changes at the agency. With an ally in RFK Jr., it’s finally getting what it wants—to the horror of the scientists he’s sidelined.
Illustration: Viktor Hachmang for Bloomberg Businessweek
It was early 2025, and a disease that had been declared eradicated in the US a quarter-century earlier was spreading rapidly among unvaccinated children in West Texas. As measles breached Gaines County’s borders, local public-health leaders accustomed to getting support from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had to look elsewhere: The CDC was on a “communications pause” that prohibited its workers from talking with any of its state and local partners or publishing data. Not that it might have mattered. The agency’s weekly scientific journal had barely acknowledged the outbreak, and the nation’s new health leader, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was pushing unproven treatments such as vitamin A supplements and reframing vaccination as a “personal” choice.
The agency that generally coordinates communication between state and local health departments and provides the national picture on infectious diseases was largely out of commission, so Katherine Wells, public-health director in nearby Lubbock County, says she had to tap her personal network of former colleagues and friends of friends with expertise in infectious diseases to help draft her county’s outbreak plan. “It just felt very lonely,” Wells says. “It’s hard when what you depend on or rely on isn’t there anymore.”