0808 Shooting at CDC: Current and Former HHS Staff Formally Respond
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Signatures
Public servants and allies are standing together to demand work environments free from violence, accountability for leaders and policymakers who put everyday Americans in danger, and public health leaders who tell the American people the truth.
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Subject: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Workers’ Response to the August 8th Attack
To: Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Members of the U.S. Congress
Date: August 20, 2025
We, the undersigned, write to you with grave concern for America's health and security. The violent August 8th attack on CDC's headquarters in Atlanta was not random. The attacker fired hundreds of rounds into buildings as the CDC workforce inside carried out its mission of serving the American people. The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization—and now, violence.
CDC is a public health leader in America's defense against health threats at home and abroad. When a federal health agency is under attack, America’s health is under attack. When the federal workforce is not safe, America is not safe. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information, including:
Sowing public mistrust by questioning the integrity and morality of CDC’s workforce, including calling CDC a “cesspool of corruption.”[i]
Terminating critical CDC workers in a destroy-first-and-ask-questions-later[ii] manner; wasting taxpayer money while creating dangerous gaps in areas like infectious diseases detection, worker safety, and chronic disease prevention and response. [iii] Many CDC workers who focused on issues such as injury [iv] and violence prevention [v] have been fired. These agency-wide staffing cuts have impacted CDC’s emergency preparedness and response efforts [vi].
Falsely claiming mRNA vaccines "failed to protect effectively" [vii] during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently canceling $500 million in contracts for mRNA vaccine development [viii], possibly our best line of defense against another respiratory virus pandemic.
Undermining public health outbreak response by falsely claiming the measles vaccine has not been "safety tested" and that protection "wanes very quickly" [ix] while promoting inappropriate prevention measures like vitamin A [x] even as U.S. measles case numbers [xi] are at their highest in more than 30 years.
Disbanding the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) [xii] despite reassuring Senator Cassidy during his confirmation hearing that he would not change the process. The Secretary has reconstituted it with inadequately vetted members who lack appropriate expertise and whose recommendations have been driven by ideology rather than science. [xiii]
Misusing data to falsely claim childhood vaccines are the cause of autism [xiv] despite decades of research [xv] demonstrating otherwise.
These dangerous and deceitful statements and actions have contributed to the harassment and violence experienced by CDC staff. To uphold his pledge to safeguard the health of the American public, by September 2, 2025, we ask Secretary Kennedy to do the following:
Stop spreading inaccurate health information: Cease and publicly disavow the ongoing dissemination of false and misleading claims about vaccines, infectious disease transmission, and America's public health institutions.
Affirm CDC's scientific integrity: Acknowledge and affirm that CDC’s work is rooted in scientific, non-partisan evidence focused on improving the health of every American.
Guarantee the safety of the HHS workforce: Ensure that the HHS workforce can carry out its duties in an environment free from imminent threats of harm. This should include emergency procedures and alerts that are fully functional for all workers and taking vigorous action to remove high-profile online material targeting the federal workforce such as the widely seen "DEI watchlists."
The deliberate destruction of trust in America's public health workforce puts lives at risk. We urge you to act in the best interest of the American people—your friends, your families, and yourselves.
Finally, we wish to honor Officer David Rose, who made the ultimate sacrifice in giving his life to protect others, and we extend our deepest gratitude for his service.
We sign this declaration in our own personal capacities, on our personal time, and without the use of government equipment, as protected by our First Amendment rights. In addition to the named signers, we include anonymous signers and speak for countless others across HHS who share our concerns but who chose not to sign out of fear of retaliation and personal safety.
Signatures
[i] https://www.gbnews.com/politics/us/rfk-promises-clean-cesspool-corruption-cdc
[ii] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rfk-jr-announces-hhs-reinstating-programs-employees-cut/story
[iii] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/layoffs-begin-at-hhs-agencies-responsible-for-research-tracking-disease-and-regulating-food
[iv] https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-consumer-safety-agency-stop-collecting-swaths-data-after-cdc-cuts-2025-04-16/#:~:text=April%2016%20(Reuters)%20%2D%20The,source%20familiar%20with%20the%20situation
[v] http://publichealthnewswire.org/?p=shooting-at-cdc-also-an-attack-on-violence-prevention
[vi] https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/cdc-scraps-plan-to-help-texas-schools-curb-measles-more-layoffs-loom/
[vii] https://www.factcheck.org/2025/08/rfk-jr-justifies-cuts-to-mrna-vaccine-projects-with-falsehoods/
[viii] https://apnews.com/article/kennedy-vaccines-mrna-pfizer-moderna-1fb5b9436f2957075064c18a6cbbe3c9
[ix] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/health-secretary-rfk-jr-measles-vaccine-falsely-claims-wanes-rcna200636
[x] https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/fact-checked/fact-checked-vitamin-a-does-not-prevent-measles
[xi] https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html
[xii] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/rfk-jr-removing-17-members-cdcs-vaccine-advisory/story
[xiii] https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-oversight.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2025-07-10.rg-rk-to-cdc-re-acip-and-vaccines.pdf
[xiv] https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/factcheck-org-kennedy-cites-flawed-paper-in-bid-to-justify-vaccine-autism-link/
[xv] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24814559/
