Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez never contacted the chair of the vaccine advisory committee at the center of her high-profile dispute with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the chair said Thursday.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — outside scientists who discuss scientific studies and make recommendations to the CDC on the routine vaccination schedules for children and adults — meets Thursday and Friday. The ACIP’s recommendations inform which shots are reimbursed by health plans.
In opening remarks at Thursday’s meeting, ACIP Chair Martin Kulldorff stated that Monarez never bothered to contact the ACIP before the animated argument with Kennedy that preceded her firing and the resignations of three top CDC officials.
“A few weeks ago, the CDC director was removed and three members of the CDC leadership resigned citing divergent opinions about vaccines. On vaccines, this committee is the key advisor to the CDC director, but during her short tenure she never contacted me as the ACIP chair about any of her questions or concerns, which would have been natural if she had had such concerns,” he said. “Neither were we contacted by any of the CDC officials who subsequently resigned.”
The three other CDC officials who resigned also never contacted the ACIP with concerns. Kulldorff also said he has worked productively with other CDC staff.
The revelation follows testimony Monarez gave before a Senate committee Wednesday in which she stressed concerns about the ACIP as central to her break with her former boss. Kennedy booted all 17 members of the ACIP on June 9. Kennedy has long been critical of the committee as compromised by ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Monarez testified that she began hearing concerns that Kennedy’s new appointees to the ACIP would change the childhood vaccination schedule on Aug. 2, two days after her swearing in.
But Monarez dithered on several questions central to her brief tenure, including her stance on the scientific evidence pertaining to specific vaccines or when she began speaking with her attorneys, who have frequently represented opponents to President Donald Trump.
“You don’t recall retaining your attorneys?? … It wasn’t that long ago, and I think I could recall when I hired an attorney.”@SenMullin confronts former CDC Director Susan Monarez over her hiring of anti-Trump lawyers. pic.twitter.com/7OZRvDPgUs
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 17, 2025
Should CDC officials be required to consult ACIP before making vaccination policy decisions?
Attorney Mark Zaid previously represented the intelligence official whose whistleblower complaint was central to Trump’s 2019 impeachment inquiry. Attorney Abbe David Lowell represents New York Attorney General Letitia James and has previously represented Hunter Biden and former Trump administration staffer Miles Taylor.
Zaid did not respond to a request for comment.
In a Sept. 4 Wall Street Journal op-ed following her termination, Monarez cited concerns about the makeup of the new ACIP as the source of her tug-of-war with Kennedy but named no specific concerns with the new members’ biographies.
“We are currently experiencing heated controversies about vaccines. And a key question is: Who can you trust? Here’s my advice: When there are different scientific views, only trust scientists willing to engage and publicly debate scientists with other views. With such debates you can weigh and determine the scientific reasoning by each side, but without it you cannot properly judge their arguments,” Kulldorff said.
Monarez does not have expertise in vaccines, Kulldorff charged.
Kulldorff also pushed back on a New York Times op-ed describing the reconstituted committee as “unqualified individuals” with “dangerous and unscientific views” coauthored by several former CDC directors. Kulldorff taught at Harvard Medical School until his termination over a vaccine mandate implemented by the university’s teaching hospital.
“This committee has a wide variety of vaccine expertise,” he said. “As a professor at Harvard Medical School, I developed epidemiological and biostatistical models for post-marketing vaccine studies that CDC regularly uses, including three methods used for CDC presentations at our last ACIP meeting in June.”
A Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found several of the officials identified by the Times only as “former CDC officials” have ties to special interests undercut by the Make America Healthy Again agenda.
In an interview outside the hearing room where Monarez was testifying, a coauthor of that piece, former CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat, told the DCNF that she had concerns with the ACIP process under Kennedy but did not name specific concerns with specific individuals.
“Just the entire process has been corrupted. I’m not looking at individuals,” she said.
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