Something unprecedented just happened at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A newly reconstituted advisory committee voted to recommend delaying hepatitis B vaccination for most babies. The vote overturns a 30-year policy that led to a massive decline in infant infections.
In today’s episode, Ken talks with former CDC Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Dr. Demetre Daskalakis. Daskalakis spent decades fighting on the front lines of America’s toughest public health battles. He brought HIV testing to the communities that needed it most. He stopped a meningitis outbreak in its tracks and he led the national Mpox response. He left the CDC in August.
Daskalakis breaks down the recent shake-up at the CDC and why the best sign that federal public health efforts are working are that they’re not in the news – unlike today.
Ken: Hi there, Ken Cook here. I'm having another episode today. I'm joined by Dr. Demetre Daskalakis. He's an infectious disease physician and a very prominent public health leader. And I can say from spending a little bit of time with him, he's the kind of doc you want at the bedside. To talk you through a difficult conversation, a difficult diagnosis, a difficult procedure.
He's really got that manner about him and he rolls up his sleeves. Uh, Dr. Dmitri has spent over two decades at the front lines of some of our most challenging public health threats. He founded innovative HIV testing programs in New York City, bringing services directly to high risk communities. He led the response to a dangerous meningitis outbreak, and at the CDC, he directed the division of HIV prevention before becoming the White House's deputy Coordinator for the EMPO response during the 2022 outbreak.
Highly infectious diseases, and Dr. Dimitri was right there in 2025. He resigned as director of the CDC’S National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Alongside several other senior officials at the CDC following the Trump administration's removal of CDC Director Susan Monez, Dmitri's departure underscored growing concerns about the erosion of scientific integrity inside the agency.
Really pretty close to a revolt inside the agency. So less than two weeks ago, we witnessed something unprecedented at the CDC’s Advisory Committee on immunization practices known as ACIP. And this is right in the area that Dmitri was such an important figure at the CDC, the newly reconstituted committee.
After Secretary Kennedy removed summarily all 17 previous members and installed replacements widely described by experts as critics of vaccine policy or individuals without vaccine science expertise, that committee voted eight to three to recommend delaying when most babies receive the hepatitis B vaccine.
This reversed a 30-year-old policy that helped drive infections in infants and young children of Hepatitis B from the thousands every year down to a single or low double digits. Needless to say, a stunning and very troubling shift. The policy changes are striking and scary, and today we'll be discussing what those changes and other changes at the CDC mean for public health, vaccine policy, the role of scientific integrity in protecting Americans from infectious disease, and also the central issue of how we trust or don't trust public health authorities in this country. So welcome to the show, Dr., I think you're a DC native, is that right?
Dr. D: I am, I am. And you can call me Dmitri.
Ken: Uh, much easier and yeah, no, I was all right.
Dr. D: I'm the rare DC native.
Ken: There are a couple points in your career before we get to the CDC I'm certain shaped your career trajectory, and made you understand the importance of both institutional authority that needed to be used right and well and thoroughly in the public interest and what to do when that wasn't happening.
It's just my guess that this formed around your early training and maybe your first engagement with, around 2006, with the men's sexual health project. That's just a guess on my part.
Dr. D: Yeah. I mean, I learned how to do public health accidentally. I never sort of understood what public health was, which is, I think, what the problem is with, so with the world, no one really knows what it is because it's, if it does its job, right, it's sort of connective tissue that you don't see.
You think about the main organs, but not the connective tissue. But yeah, I mean, I think sort of starting to do work by deciding to engage with the community in places that, you know, were frankly pretty ostracized, stigmatized environments, I think really taught me a lot about community and also taught me a lot about how to do public health.
Ken: Yeah. And so that was in the early 2000’s then you were in the Department of Health in New York City for a while. That's in the trenches.
Dr. D: Oh yeah. It is the premier health department in the world and they didn't pay me to say it. It really is the premier health department in the world and I feel like the sort of experience I had doing HIV and STI screening and connection to care and post exposure prophylaxis for HIV like in the clubs in New York City — I think then like translated into like I was partially like an expert and partially like connected to the community in a way that like others maybe, you know, there are some out there, but that didn't have like that same sort of, you know, fundamental connection. So working at New York City Department of Health, like I moved from running the HIV bureau where, you know, we made all these changes that drove the HIV numbers way down, and I think changed the tenor of, HIV prevention and care in the city.
But then like, you know, moved into disease control where I was in charge of all of the infectious diseases in the city as well as the public health lab. And now that was, you know, where I really went from doing public health, that was more the everyday public health into the public health that was like the emergency response.
Yeah. I went to school to get a public health degree and it was great. I went to Harvard. I learned so much when I started the Department of Health in New York City. I didn't really know how to do applied public health, and I learned from, you know, amazing public health professionals, but also many of them had been epidemic intelligent service officers at CDC.
So. I never did that program, but if that program didn't exist, I would not know what I'm doing. So it was a great experience.
Ken: I always tell people that the strength of the public health system is what you walk into your doctor's office with, right? I happen to come from an end of the environmental community that works a lot, has worked a lot with public health professionals who really did understand it, and were in the public health service.
What are we missing? It's not just that we're missing it, but that that profession suddenly seems, uh, reviled. I'd be curious to know your perspective as someone from the inside you, which it might, it bothers me, and I I can only imagine it bothers you.
Dr. D: Yeah, I mean I have an interesting perspective because I'm inside, outside.
Yeah. The simple answer is it's different than medical care. So that's number one. So public health is not going to the doctor or going to the hospital, but what public health actually is, is like a way of thinking, an infrastructure and a group of scientists that really are the connective tissue that connect community with clinical care.
So it's like the bridge. It's not just clinical care, it's like environmental health, all of those things. Yeah, so it's, it's the stuff that clinical care doesn't do and the stuff that non-medical people don't do. And it, it's sort of the thing that then is the bridge. It's like the program that makes sure that vaccines are available for children who may not have insurance.
It's the program that makes sure that we are able to figure out what's going on with food infection outbreaks. It's the program that supports overdose prevention. Right so it's all the stuff that kind of is underneath that sort of connects it all together, but is different than the going to the hospital to see your doctor.
Ken: Yeah. And also conducts surveillance to make sure we're on top of things that absolutely might be presented in thousands of doctors' offices across the country, but they add up to something that's, that's bigger and maybe worse. Yeah.
Dr. D: No one would know what's happening with diseases, whether they're infectious or non-infectious.
If it wasn't for public health. The hospital can only see what the hospital knows, or the health network can only see what the health network knows, public health sees all. Yeah. So it's able to sort of look across systems, across hospitals, across providers, and they're able to say, you know, influenza is increasing in Kentucky.
As an example. Right? And so, you know, maybe the hospital in Lexington can say, oh yeah, it's increasing, but it's the public health like infrastructure, that says, that can give you like this more industrial strength, big information that guides what we do in the country.
Ken: I've read a little bit about, and I remember the meningitis outbreak in New York City, that seems to me at the, as if it might have been one of the crucibles that you worked your way through to, you know, brighten your understanding even more of public health. Talk about that a little bit.
Dr. D: There was an outbreak of meningococcal disease — it's a bacteria that causes meningitis that was mainly happening in gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men.
And at that time, it was before I joined the Department of Health in New York City and I was running all of these programs that were providing services to like hundreds of gay, bisexual men all over New York City and so when I heard about the outbreak, the clinician in me said, well, obviously there's a vaccine. And the vaccine is like one of the ways that you end this outbreak, so I should be able to figure out how to do vaccines like in the places where I interact with the men who were specifically at the highest risk. So I called my friends at the Department of Health and they were like, well, it's a little atypical, but like, let's get you trained up on vaccine storage and handling, and then you can go out there and do vaccines.
And everyone was like, ‘eh, he'll do a couple hundred and it's the end.’ 3,500 later — one of the big reasons why we were able to end the outbreak in New York City. I with my hands gave about 3,500 of them in clubs all over New York City and also at a couple of clinics that recruited people from clubs to come during normal business hours.
Ken: Well, I thank you for that. I mean, you know, I find myself wanting to thank doctors these days because they all have stories like that, especially doctors who either found themselves, especially lately in an infectious disease crises that was obviously one meningitis is nothing to mess with.
Dr. D: No. There were people who died and so like, that's why, you know, it was really important to me. I had the platform, I had the community, I had the clinical skill, and I had a public health department, you know, that said, let's give it a shot and literally let's give it a shot and it worked. And so that's one good way to learn how to do your first vaccine campaign. It sort of mattered for the future for me, but it was really good.
Ken: So by 2020, by then you've joined the CDC in the division of HIV prevention? So you're coming into the CDC, right?
Dr. D: I had a little other claim to fame there, which was that I was the incident commander for COVID 19 in New York City from January, 2020 until November, 2020, before I went to CDC.
Ken: Oh my gosh!
Dr. D: So my COVID experience was epicenter, like the leader of the agency. It was crazy. It was a very formative experience for all, A) you know, I survived, and B) It was formative. It doesn't get bigger than that in terms of handling a pandemic.
Ken: No, of course not. And thank you for that service too. And when you hear people talking about how we could have managed COVID differently — and I'm sure you have ideas about how we might have done things differently I'd love to hear them — but I get feedback from people who tell me that COVID wasn't real.Even when I criticize Kennedy or write something about MAHA or what have you, it's a flash point and the threshold that they want to set is that it's all made up.
Dr. D: Yeah. It wasn't made up. No, I mean,I didn't have a day off for about seven or eight months and every day was — I couldn't write a horror movie more horrific than sort of the experience of a virus, you know, really trying to destroy people. And so yeah, I mean, I think it was all so very real. And you know, I think, Ken, you're gonna agree that, you know, I think there's a lot of distortion that happens in a lot of manipulation of our memories.
And I remember going, you know, to Elmhurst in New York and seeing really horrible things and going to Jacob Javits Center where we had created a makeshift hospital and looking at the — I guess it was the USS Hope — the ship that was docked and, you know, I went to testing centers when we started them up and saw people getting their COVID tests and, you know, I beg to differ, that definitely history has demonstrated that this has been a pretty significant event caused by a virus.
Ken: Yeah. Yeah. I had missed that part of your distinguished career. So then you go to the CDC and of course COVID is still well underway. You had just come from ground zero, literally. When you came to the agency, what, what was the mood there?
Dr. D: They were still in full on emergency response, and when I landed, I mean, one of the things that I had negotiated as part of my job was that I would not go into COVID for a few months.Like ideally, I said six months because I had, you know, just done the big job in the big city for many, many, many, many, many months and I was, you know, pretty burnt out on COVID and really excited to go back into the HIV space. That's not what happened. In two and a half months I was running the vaccine task force and so it's okay,but I feel like the mood was — there was a happiness that was new because it was in the era where the mRNA vaccines and the protein — all of the vaccines were available. And so I think that they had come through a really dark wilderness.
You know, when there was nothing except for like these non-pharmaceutical interventions, which have been, you know, in retrospect been made so controversial.But like when you go into the time machine, when you don't have any treatments, vaccines, all you have is time and space and barriers to try to prevent transmission and none of them are good, they're only okay. Like nothing is good, like, but, and that's the part that I think, like in hindsight, you know, you're able to say that, you know, this was a mistake and that was a mistake, but there was a new virus floating around that no one understood.
Every week the science changed, so the recommendations changed. And so I feel like, you know, definitely things could have been done better in terms of messaging. But that is looking at my retrospectroscope, it's looking hindsight. And like I remember being like in front of the New York Press court, which is like pretty much as hard as the White House press court like answering questions and you know, being pushed to try to be more absolute and you know, definitive when there was no absolute or definitive. You know it was hard, but I mean, I do think that when I landed, they had already gotten through like December 20, January, 2020. When the sort of first round of vaccination happened and they started to see things looking better, and until I, when I was in the COVID space, I started working with, you know, booster one was like the era that I was working in vaccine. And there was this big move at CDC that was trying to look at the lessons learned from like the early days of the pandemic to change how CDC worked in the future and a lot of changes had already been made by the time I got there.
Ken: Yeah. Friends of mine were at the CDC at the time and, not so much as in the infectious disease end of it, but it affected the whole agency at that time.
Dr. D: Oh, yeah. No one was immune from it, from the COVID response. Right. So that's the bottom line is, and that same for New York City, like, yeah it was all hands on deck.
And I feel like that's, yeah. You know, I can be sort of aggressive and say like, one of the biggest things that I would change is never letting public health be attacked and defunded, because then when the pandemic happens, then all of a sudden it's not adequate and people are working 130 hour work weeks with no breaks until they get sobered out that they either have to go to the hospital or have to quit their job.So that is, I think the thing that, in retrospect, I would say like the lesson is stop cutting public health because it's cutting into muscle that changes the ability of the entire nation to respond.
Ken: But here we go again. Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing.
Dr. D: In TB it's called a u-shaped curve of concern. When there's a lot of tuberculosis, resources and attention go really up, and then the minute that the cases go down, it goes down and the U goes right back up, 'cause the cases come up. And so I don't give infectious diseases like viruses, fungi, bacteria, brains, but I will say that they always know when they're not being respected. And so like, you know, there needs to be a healthy respect for the fact that when you put humans against microbes, if you don't sort of resource the way to protect them from the microbes adequately, the microbes will sometimes win.
Ken: Yes, yes, that's right. And of course you have — there are some people who have to convince that microbes are real thing and yeah — a cause of disease. But let's leave that aside from a little, we'll just leave that.
Dr. D: Like the miasmas around us.
Ken: Yeah. Yes, yes. What else were you working on?
Dr. D: Well, I was there for five years and I had more than five jobs in that time.
Ken: Welcome to the CDC, right?
Dr. D: Indeed. So I landed there as the division director for HIV Prevention, as you said and then I was in the COVID response as the head of the vaccine task force, which was, you know, that was important because the vaccine was distributed by the federal government, CDC had a very hands-on role, so that was important.
Ken: Yeah. That was towards the end of the Trump administration.
Dr. D: So I landed there at the end of the Trump administration, and I wasn't in the COVID response until the first few months of the Biden administration.
Ken: And how would you, how would you assess the attention they gave to it?
Dr. D: Oh, I've been impressed. Trump won I mean, and Biden was putting a lot of attention on COVID because it was like the most critical. It wasn't like one wasn't more than the other. It was the same. And they were putting like, uh, you know, really high levels of emphasis because not only was it about health and, and people dying, but it was also the economic impact had been so clearly felt.
Then of course it was the centerpiece of all the things. So when I was in New York City, I felt that like there was a lot of attention that was provided by the Trump — the first Trump administration. And then when I was at at CDC, I felt very similarly, like this was the centerpiece of their agenda, was trying to sort of wrap themselves around, uh, to control COVID.
Ken: And such an important point, right, that here you had the same scientists and public health experts working across two administrations.Both administrations grasp the significance, in their own way, of the problem and there was nothing partisan about it. It was ‘oh my gosh, we have, we have a big common enemy here and we have to come together and do something about it.’
Dr. D: That's right. That changed with the third administration when we hit Trump 2 and everything, it's completely different, but the first Trump administration and the Biden administration were like all hands on deck, ‘let's take care of this thing.’ Yeah, and you know, remember the Trump administration is operation warp speed. They're the ones that did all, I mean like that is like one of the public health milestones, miracles.
Ken: A hundred percent.
Dr. D: Along with antiretroviral therapy for HIV. Those are probably like the two biggest right up there.
Ken: No, I, I couldn't agree more. And to watch the twisting and turning now in this administration, in this, the current Trump administration, trying to reckon with that success against the ideology that, yeah. The HHS secretary brings — who's renowned for saying all kinds of crazy things, specifically about COVID, but not just COVID, I mean even about HIV, AIDS, you name it, we've got it like, so HIV, AIDS, Measles — all the vaccines — the list goes on and on.
What was the mindset as you saw this coming along? Pretty much the entire public interest community was opposed to Kennedy — our organization opposed his nomination. We always felt that there was a con going on there and that the real game was to talk about food, but take action on vaccines.What was your sense inside? Did you know Kennedy or?
Dr. D: So I’ve never met the man. Remember I was the head of vaccines. There's two of us, that sort of spanned the vaccine endeavor. And I had like the, the part that didn't have to do with vaccine safety with Dr. Dan Jernigan’s team, but we had Dr. Deb Houry who resigned when I resigned and yeah, and she was the transition lead for the agency. And so she had us line up like we were in the military and which she — 'cause she's amazing — she's an ER doctor and like the gene is strong and it's great. Yep. And so she lined us up like our different centers and we had different responsibilities to prepare for transition because that's what you do.
Yeah, when you're a career scientist or a career civil servant, absolutely. You just do the thing, which is I am going to try my best to learn all we can about these people or this person. We're going to have all of our briefings ready. We're gonna have 101 briefing books so that he can learn about the agency.
We're gonna do all of this, and then like, you know, generally speaking, what happens is that people land with great gusto to learn about your agency so that they can do work.
Ken: I've been on those transition teams on both sides, and that's exactly what happens.
Dr. D: That's not what happened. They didn't give a damn about anything about the agency. They didn't care about anything. They landed with their agenda. Even though what they had said was a lot different, like when he entered HHS and had his welcome speech, my entire center, I made them stop working and I go like, ‘you need to listen to every word this guy says, because he's gonna be in our future.’
Everyone was like, well, you know, ‘we can work with that, we're gonna make America a healthy gold standard, like all of that.’ Yeah, yeah. Like, I'm gonna not come with preconceived notions and I'm gonna work with you. We're like, this is great. And so we all tried to send information to offer briefings to get that transition going, and they just had no interest.
They landed their sort of planning to do their own thing. And having done this, you know, in some capacity many times, one of the red flags is when you have people who are trying to, you know, completely revamp an agency without taking any time to learn about it. Yeah. That is a big red flag. And here we are.
Ken: I'm sure you watched the confirmation hearings.
Dr. D: Sure did.
Ken: We live casted them with a whole group of experts including the head of APHA among others. I found it shocking. But what, what was the reaction at the CDC in Atlanta?
Dr. D: So, I mean, I'll just start by saying I, my first interaction, like coming into the RFK Junior Universe was: I was running the measles response in New York City as the incident manager from 2018 to 2019.
And my impression was, who's this kooky guy that keeps suing us while we're trying to stop an outbreak that could potentially kill children? All of those suits were dismissed. But then ultimately, like when we were listening to the confirmation hearings, my first response was who actually briefed him because they did a terrible job.
He didn't seem to know anything about Medicaid or Medicare. He like really didn't understand public health. There was an entitlement that was frankly offensive. Where rather than having to answer questions, he could just have a you know, a twist of a phrase and just like, you know, walk away and move on.
And so that was my impression. I was like, you know, but I was like, you know, we're gonna have to work with this guy and we've done all the work. In my head, I'm like, the weight of being responsible for the health of all of America in your job should counteract some of your conspiratorial kookiness and it didn't.
Ken: Yeah. You know, I think it's been proven to be the case that one reason he probably didn't engage and it's been a lack of engagement ever since, is because. He wasn't confident and didn't have a team that was going to present his viewpoint and argue it out on scientific grounds, that was not gonna work out for him.
I mean, even in the exchange, you know, with Senator Cassidy, just that brief exchange where Cassidy was able to, to say, you know, that the study you're sighting has all kinds of question marks about it. Just in that brief moment you realize that Kennedy just wanted to go around those arguments and the way you go around those arguments is what led to the resignation of the head of the CDC and the rest of you. So he comes in, he gives the speech to HHS employees. He had already said he was gonna fire a lot of people. And then at the end of January, tens of thousands of people are fired from HHS. Give me — what was the play-by-play doc?
Dr. D: I mean, like, you know, different people will answer this in different ways because Deb had, you know, she almost resigned — and she'll say this to you — when they were going to do the first round of reductions in forces on April 1st, there were gonna be so catastrophic that there would be like nothing left at CDC.
And so like she pushed back and was able to sort of roll many of those back. So that was hers. For me, mine had a lot to do about vaccines, so my center did not lose a lot of people during the first two rounds of reductions in force. Like just, we were held immune as it were. And so 16 people actually were fired from my entire center, which is like, you know, over 1400 people.
So it's still, I mean, those people, you know, that's their jobs, their lives and all that, but it wasn't like they chop 500 people. So for me, the first thing was when I was informed about Secretary Kennedy changing the vaccine schedule for children and pregnant people on an X post, so on a Twitter post.
And I was like, well, that's not how we do things. And not just, we like the CDC, we, but like, that's not how anyone should accept government. Like you don't want your vaccine policy done fast and loose. And so that was a red flag. We were able to mitigate that a little bit in terms of like making it a little, a softer thing where kids could still access vaccines and frankly, they're so bad at governing, they didn't realize that when they said no pregnant women should get it, technically pregnancy is an underlying risk factor, so it canceled that out anyway, so you know, that was that. That was not the moment.
The next thing was when they fired all of the advisory committee for immunization practices staff and brought in what I call the zombie, ACIP, which is just like so much ideology driven with, you know, more questionable science and conspiracy.
That got me really close, but I was like, I need to stay there because what I can do is keep CDC doing the — its scientific part. And if these people talk about crazy things, let them talk about crazy things so everyone can see how crazy they are.
Ken: That's a key point. You know, you can't change the science.
No. And suppressing it gets you in trouble and doesn't change it. No. Right? It's the science that is still rolling forward. The evidence is accumulating. When you suppress it, you can certainly give the appearance of decisiveness with a different set of evidence, but they never show their work doc.
Dr. D: Correct. I say that all the time. Like if they were in math class in elementary school, they'd get an F. And that is the main thing. But what's happening now — so I'm gonna like fast forward the tape — is that there seems to be no need to actually have science prove anything.
Ken: What?
Dr. D: That's right. Instead what they're doing is creating documents to support what are going to be really nefarious things, especially in vaccine that will destabilize the trust of parents and also destabilize the manufacturers of vaccines so much that we may not have vaccines in the near future. And so why bother doing a study when instead you can, you know, change the website on vaccines and autism and just say it is not scientifically accurate to say that vaccines do not cause autism, when in fact it is very scientifically correct to say that they do not cause autism.
So when I left, I feel like I was a fortune teller. I said, this is what's coming. They're just gonna make announcements and it's gonna be the law of the land or the policy of the land, and no scientists will be involved. And so as that was happening for the ACIP and we all got sidelined and, and they were creating an environment where like they could present conspiracy theory and make it equal to CDC science.
When Susan Menez was fired, where I no longer had a scientific leader who could go up into the secretary space and try to be a diplomat for trying to not really screw up the whole country, when all that happened, that's when I resigned. Because it's like, there's like the CDC that's the scientist and they're held hostage by an HHS that doesn't care what the science says because they're just putting out what they want, which is just frankly the playbook that RFK Jr has had for 20 years.
Nothing is surprising. I read the books, I was ready for him to come, and I was like, there's no way he's gonna do all this because Right? Like it's not based in science and he's responsible for the health of people. And he doesn't care. He cares about two things. One, he cares to prove that he's right. Right? The best way to get political power is to prove that you're not completely a kook. And so he's trying to deify himself by creating source documents that say that he's right. And the second thing is he's gonna sue the pants and his friends are gonna sue the pants off of vaccine manufacturers when they are able to say all of this autism is caused by vaccines 'cause you can't prove it's not. And so like it's money in the bank and political cachet and that is why kids are gonna die of vaccine preventable diseases.
Ken: Yeah, I think there's a third factor, which is revenge.
Dr. D: A hundred percent.
Ken: Right. I think the grievance that comes through from Kennedy and his court, Cali means and others, that the medical profession is devoted now to having sick people because that's how they make money and pediatricians make all their money from their vaccine refrigerator in the back of the office and all the other stuff. The fact that he was dissed by the mainstream media. Now avoids it, gives no interviews. The fact that, um, he was dissed by the scientific establishment in a very Trumpian way, I think grievance and revenge drive this man.
Dr. D: Yeah. And you're kinder than I am. Like that's my deification theory, that this is the revenge to say I'm not a kook, but I go deeper and say like, I don't think it's ‘I wanna feel vindicated,’ I think it's also because he wants to be able to run for something in the future and say, ‘look, I was right.’ So if you can point to a CDC document and say, I told you the statement that vaccines don't cause autism is not scientifically accurate. That's what I've been saying for 20 years.
So all these people have been lying and I'm right. And meanwhile, every scientist in the world who actually understands the studies and understands a good study versus a bad study. Really doesn't believe anything he's saying. But it doesn't matter because it takes scientists three pages to say things, and all he has to do is a soundbite.
Yeah. And somehow he's been given the sort of dominion and power to make that like the law of the land.
Ken: Yeah. And if it has the imprint of the CDC, the agency he once said was corrupt and couldn't be trusted, now he wants that imprint too, validate what he's claiming, but he's side stepped everything about the CDC process.
Dr. D: Extremely Orwellian, right? It is just like right out of Orwell, all the scientists at CDC — they have mind crime. There will be vengeance upon them, and the secretary is creating doublespeak like when I hear the word gold standard science come out of his mouth or oh man, many of the people at HHS is, that literally is a distraction to tell you that we circumvented all of science and we're calling it gold.
So I like to call it fool gold standard because like there's nothing there. It's just like so much glitter with nothing underneath.
Ken: I think that's exactly right and you know, it's, I've had a number of folks on the podcast where we've reached this point where I've said, look his viewpoint on science or in any specific scientific issue such as the Tylenol theory of autism, it’s not like he brings scientists to go head to head with scientists who disagree. He just fires the scientists who disagree.
Dr. D: He said that to Dr. Menez and she said it at her hearing that his directive was keep firing until you get low enough in the organization where people don't resist you.
Or even better have your people at HHS call the web contractor going around all of the scientists and have them post your crazy autism and vaccine page. So no one has any say or any ability to even try to mitigate the harm. You know, he is the wolf and he is clothed himself in the sheep's clothing of CDC.
Yeah. He said in the New York Times, like he decided to change the vaccine and autism page and gave the directive to do it. And so that's, you know, if you like your science authoritarian and you like your policy fast and quick and distorted, then that's great.
Ken: Then he's your man.
Dr. D: Yeah, that's your man. But if you wanna actually have a process, send condolences to the scientists at CDC who are stuck in this organization that is, you know, just doing terrible things for, for people. Forget the science. This is a terrible thing and autistic kids and their parents should be so mad.
Ken: Yeah, and they are.They are. They should be tired. I've talked to a lot of them.
Dr. D: He is literally taking advantage because he is just trying to generate litigation so he makes more money and it's just gonna cause so much harm to people.
Ken: Yeah. I haven't heard him say a word about actually improving the service and the assistance that we provide to the families who have autistic children.
Dr. D: You know, I go back to what I said in my letter. There is an extreme, extreme, vein of eugenics in everything that this man does, right. Survival of the fittest. We don't care about people with disabilities. Remember that the acting director of CDC, like when they pull down all of these websites about people with disabilities, was like, well, that's a great start.
So it's like there's a certain group of people who should propagate to restock the flock, and everybody else is plumb out of luck because underneath all this is like this idealized view that, you know, we're optimizing the environment so that the superior genetics can shine through. And if you have something that's hard for you, like let's just keep cutting your services so you're not able to get it anyway.
Yeah. So I mean like it's dark, but I actually believe that that's what you're seeing.
Ken: No, I think that's right. And I think, I don't know if you've read the book, the Project about Project 2025. I strongly recommend it. I'm trying to get the offer.
Dr. D: Well, I haven't read it, but I will.
Ken: Oh man. Uh, that kind of thinking about healthcare is, um, manifest there.
And it's not just a plan. It was, it was an active, let's recruit people who can make this happen, which he certainly does. So what do you, I'm sure you're in touch with a lot of people on the inside who are still there. I started off by admiring and thanking you for standing up and stepping down, resigning on principle.
But, you know, not everyone can do that. Not everyone, right? You know, I mean, people have lives, people have mortgages and also, you know, some people probably feel that they can put their head down and still contribute to him, you know, good things. We heard all this during the first Trump administration of course.
Of people saying, yeah, I could quit, but then really crazy people would run the show. But what are you hearing from your former colleagues at the CDC?
Dr. D: I mean, like, when the autism and vaccine page went up, like, I have people calling me crying, so yeah, I feel like everybody is in, you know, it's the advice that we've all given everybody, you know, you have to find your line and stick to it.
But you have to do what's right for you as well as sort of your respect for that line. And so, you know, I think that the main message is that people are trying to sort of focus on the scientific work that they do, realizing that some of it is being disregarded, but still they're sort of holding, they're holding the fort there.
And, and so, you know, they're distraught and, you know, the, frankly on October 10th when they did the reductions in forces related to the government closure, it's a preview, like so they rolled some of them back. But like that's their plan and so those are all coming.
When Russ said that he wants to make like every day in the life of a federal worker miserable, and he wants the everything to be extremely traumatizing. Congratulations. You've achieved it.
These people are just sitting there going like, I'm gonna hang out as long as I can. I'm trying to look for jobs to figure out where I'm gonna go.
There are no jobs because everybody is looking for them and yeah, they're really distraught and you know, there's gonna be a — there are people who are going to quit like me with no plan for the future because, you know, it's just they're gonna be asked to do something that's wrong and so, yeah.You know, that's where we are.
Ken: Yeah. I got to know Bill Ruckelshaus a little bit and got to thank him one time. We had a mutual friend, Bill Riley, who also was the EPA administrator under Bush 1. I feel like I'm talking to someone who's achieved something at that scale in the public health realm.
Dr. D: Well, thank you.
Ken: So I'll just say it, you and your colleagues, I know you resigned as a team and maybe I'll get a chance to talk to some of your teammates down the road, but let me ask you this: you're a hands-on doc as well as a public health person sitting behind a computer screen. You've been out and giving the shots. You've worked in these communities. You've explained complex things to people. What do you say to the MAHA followers? The advice you would give or the warnings or the, yeah, the counsel, I mean?
Dr. D: I've had a great opportunity to speak to some folks in the MAHA movement and I'll start by saying extremely diverse.Right. So there's people who were devoted to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and that's a very different person than people that really wanna explore ways to make food safer. Ways to sort of provide, so it's very different humans. So I feel like one of the things that I think is important is, and, and have, has been important in what I've said is, you know, a really important acid test for the things that you're hearing is, will it actually make a difference in people's health?
And is this actually supporting the ability to make your own decision? And so I think, you know, there's examples of food dyes, which are interesting, but also like have been demonstrated to be safe, that have been removed and have been celebrated as a, you know, really big deal. And so, you know, your potato chips may be less yellow, but they're still full of all the same oil, cholesterol, and salt.
Yeah. And so like what are we actually winning? And so that's question one and question two, like when you're talking about medical freedom, like if people are taking away vaccines and making it harder to get, like, are we really doing this the right way? Like is there like a strategy. It sort of achieves the vision of folks feeling like they have more dominion over their kids or themselves.
That doesn't also then mean that kids that want vaccines may not be able to get them because of some of these policies that will be extremely damaging. So you have to listen to your source. And I, you know, I think one of the hard parts is that, you know, folks within that movement that don't necessarily have the sort of background to be able to be very authoritative about things — really sound authoritative and just, like I try to do, get a diversity of opinion to try to figure out like what's actually like a guiding principle to make people healthy versus a thing that just looks good on paper or that you can tweet out and say, ‘yay, we make potato chips less yellow.’
You put real sugar in coke, right? So congratulations. It still causes all the diabetes.
Ken: Yeah, we have worked, my organization has worked in California and elsewhere to try and deal with some of the food dyes and other things that we think are problematic. We've spent a lot of time working on that and never once have we said this is the biggest issue in the world.
It's just something we should have, should be taking care of, is they've taken care of it in Europe and elsewhere. But the other thing that's interesting about this is that with sort of medical populism, health freedom, medical freedom, it's often the substitution of organized medical authority for another set of authorities that have, that are a mixture of conspiracy theories and advice about supplements, and just an alternative way of thinking about this that people adhere to just as strongly and obey, just as strongly as the authorities grounded in medical science that they reject. People want authority in some ways. They just, they just like to hear it from someone who's selling a supplement or someone who's saying, hey, you know, you can cure cancer if you follow such and such a diet.’ It's frightening, but it's real and people want that. So what do you think the project is now? To deal with Kennedy?
Dr. D: Oversight, oversight, oversight. Like everyone, call your congress person. Make sure that they know that this is, that there's something wrong.
And I feel like that is like our key. I mean, you know, he gets, he magnifies himself with bad press or good press. He doesn't care anymore, which is a thing. But oversight is something that I think will continue. And I think the, and you know, as the pendulum swings, I think different people will have different questions that will be very hard for him to answer, since it seems pretty clear that he lied to Congress.
Ken: Especially to Cassidy. Yeah. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis thank you so much, doc. Thank you. Thank you. I can't tell you how much this conversation means to me, and I know it's going to be meaningful to our listeners, so I'm so grateful for your courage and your decisiveness. You know, on behalf of the public health, which is on behalf of all of us.
Thank you to Dr. Demetre Daskalakis for joining us, and congratulations on your new position as Chief Medical Officer of the Callen Lorde Community Health of New York. And thank you out there for listening. If you'd like to learn more, be sure to check out our show notes for additional links for a deeper dive into today's discussion, make sure to follow our show on Instagram at Ken Cooks podcast.
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Today's episode was produced by the remarkable, truly remarkable Beth Row and Mary Kelly. Special thanks to Rayan Kahn, who's working with me right here in the studio here in DC and our show's music is by Moby. Thank you Moby. And thanks again to all of you for listening.