‘RFK Jr is a disaster': Staff describe chaos in ‘anti-science' regime

Times

a day ago

For the workers of Building 21, keeping a low profile is considered the best way to survive.
Zoom meetings are avoided out of fear they are being secretly recorded. Conversations about budgets and policies are held in soundproof offices, as if they were matters of national security. Many employees carry small notebooks with them, jotting down notes instead of logging them on a computer. The desks of several sacked colleagues are empty — save for the few who have left family photos and possessions behind in case a judge rules they can return.
It sounds like a scene out of Nineteen Eighty-four — yet this is the headquarters of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Here, staff do everything they can to avoid the twentysomething officials from the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) who stalk the building's corridors, said a global health specialist at Building 21, who asked that his name not be used.
'There is a constant sense that we're being watched and monitored,' the source said. 'Doge leadership are located several floors above but they have this omnipotent presence … We're counted when we swipe our badges into the building.'
Ever since Robert F Kennedy Jr was appointed health secretary in February, more than 10,000 staff — many with decades of experience — have been fired. Now, the tens of thousands of health workers and scientists still employed by the US government feel like their lives have been turned upside down, according to ten current and former staff at the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), speaking to The Times.
Under instruction from Kennedy and Doge, health priorities have been reset, longstanding scientific norms disrupted and thousands of research programmes cancelled because of their perceived 'wokeness', officials said.
'RFK Jr is a disaster,' said one CDC grant specialist who joined the agency within the past five years. 'He is completely dismantling things to the point where the damage is going to become irreparable.'
• Tom Whipple: Trump's tragic war on science could be an opportunity for Britain
Kennedy's vision to 'make America healthy again' has sparked the most significant transformation of the country's health infrastructure in generations. And the health secretary's allies argue this reform is long overdue. But in interviews with The Times, sources describe scenes of dysfunction and chaos that threaten to make America sicker.
Decades-old research centres dedicated to preventing chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease are being shuttered, one source said. Another claimed that layers of bureaucracy had been added to the approval process for grants, even though Doge's stated aim is to improve government efficiency.
A third source said funding was so short that staff were rifling through others' desks for stationery: 'We are literally going through the offices of our fired colleagues to scavenge supplies like paper and pens as we no longer have the ability to buy those types of things.'
Asked to comment on the claims, Andrew Nixon, director of communications at the US Department of Health and Human Services, said: 'Secretary Kennedy was appointed to drive bold, necessary reforms in a system long plagued by inefficiency and complacency.
'Streamlining outdated programmes, ensuring fiscal discipline and demanding transparency are not attacks on science — they are a defence of it. Secretary Kennedy remains committed to evidence-based leadership that serves the American people — not the preservation of status-quo bureaucracies.'
Kennedy's crusade to overhaul America's vaccine policies has generated the most controversy. Earlier this month he abruptly fired all 17 members of the advisory committee on immunisation practices (ACIP), a group that has reviewed vaccine trial data and advised the government on which jabs to approve for more than six decades.
The former independent presidential candidate, who has claimed for years that some vaccines are unsafe and could cause autism, said the committee was hobbled by conflicts of interest. Firing its members en masse, he said, would 're-establish public confidence in vaccine science'. Days later he hired eight new advisers, including a Covid conspiracy theorist and prominent critic of pandemic-era lockdowns.
Dr Charlotte Moser, one of the 17 sacked experts, said vaccines were being 'politicised' under Kennedy. 'My fear at this moment is for the health of the people of the United States if vaccines become less available,' she told The Times in her first public interview since her dismissal.
She pointed to the removal of Covid-19 vaccines from the list of jabs recommended for pregnant women and children — a decision that was made last month without any input from Moser and her colleagues, and which 'does not align with the science', she said.
Dr Yvonne Maldonado, another former committee member, warned that 'the firings, disruption and the chaos' of Kennedy's administration were 'incredibly damaging' and unlikely to benefit public health. 'I can't think that these downstream impacts are going to be good ones,' she said in her first public comments.
month Kennedy announced 'Generation Gold Standard' — a $500 million initiative to develop vaccines using technology dating from the 1950s. Scientists fear it marks a step back from newer, more innovative vaccine technologies like the mRNA platform, which was used for several highly effective Covid vaccines but has been demonised by antivaxers, including the organisation that Kennedy once chaired, Children's Health Defence.
An NIH source with knowledge of the initiative said the senior leadership had bypassed all the 'typical internal scientific review, discussions and grant-making processes' to launch the programme. The source said Kennedy was 'fixated on a link between vaccines and autism' and described the programme as a 'waste of money'.
'He's dropping half a billion dollars on God knows what,' said the NIH source, who asked not to be named because he is still working for the agency.
• Meet the antivax whisperer fighting the vaccine slump
Preventing chronic disease is one of the cornerstones of Kennedy's mission. In proposals that are widely supported, he has pledged to improve the quality of American produce, crack down on ultra-processed foods, detoxify the environment, diminish people's dependence on drugs and promote cleaner, healthier lifestyles.
But insiders say the teams of experts needed to achieve these aims are being dismantled. 'He's shooting himself in the foot,' said a federal worker who was recently fired from the CDC's global health centre.
Earlier this year the CDC's childhood lead-poisoning prevention programme was shuttered — despite one in two American toddlers showing detectable levels of lead, a neurotoxin that can cause cognitive impairments and developmental issues, in their blood. No reason was given for the programme's closure.
It meant the CDC was unable to help when Wisconsin requested formal aid to tackle a growing lead-contamination crisis in its schools in March. 'Due to the complete loss of our lead programme, we will be unable to support you with this,' the CDC said in response.
Kennedy later said the lead programme's 26-person team would be rehired, but one CDC source close to the situation told The Times: 'Those folks are not back yet.'
It is also understood that the Prevention Research Centres (PRC) programme — a network of 20 research hubs dedicated to chronic disease prevention in poorer communities in the United States — is to be closed after its team of federal scientists was fired in April. 'They're saying that they're just going to cancel the entire programme,' a CDC source with knowledge of discussions said.
Universities and clinics partnered with the PRC programme, like Georgia State University and the Arkansas Centre for Women's Health, have been 'left in the dark about what happens next, with no one available to answer their questions'.
Established in 1984 and renewed last year for another five years, the programme is likely to have prevented thousands of premature deaths from obesity, addiction, diabetes and cancer. 'It's one of the country's most vital and important research programs,' the CDC source said.
At the FDA, experts responsible for inspecting factories to ensure food products are safe have been hamstrung by the mass firing of project managers, administrators and communication specialists, according to one source from the agency's human foods programme. 'These are the people who keep the day-to-day operations running,' the source said.
Inspectors are now expected to book flights and hotels for assignments using their own credit cards, but because it can take weeks to get reimbursed many are reluctant to travel, the FDA source said. He added that a hiring freeze and funding constraints had made it harder for laboratories to analyse samples, further slowing the inspection process.
'The erosion of the oversight will eventually result in [food producers] cutting corners, maybe not being caught as quickly,' said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. 'As a result, things are going to slip and people will get sick.'
• RFK Jr and Dr Oz are on a mission to save Canadian ostriches
With Kennedy unable to pursue his vision of reform amid the disruption, questions are being raised over who really is in charge of the nation's health. One source speculated that it is Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, who is calling the shots.
'It's unclear to me how much RFK is actually in charge versus other Trump appointees, like Vought,' said a CDC programme co-ordinator with more than ten years at the agency. 'Kennedy clearly has certain ideas he's interested in but at this point it seems more about cutting programmes than anything else.'
Despite the push to save money and improve efficiency, three sources criticised Kennedy's team of Doge officials for adding extra layers of bureaucracy to the processing of CDC grants.
Every time a grant recipient wishes to make a drawdown from their funding allocation they must now fill out a questionnaire, which gets sent to Doge for final approval. Previously, grant recipients who had been meticulously assessed and cleared for funding could access their money whenever they wanted. 'It's the exact opposite of efficiency,' the CDC grants specialist said.
Among staff who have been fired — but whose contracts remain in limbo as federal judges review whether Kennedy's mass terminations are lawful — many said they had no desire to return to an administration they accused of being anti-science.
'There's been a number of different steps that we could take to potentially get back into the agency and I haven't taken any of them,' said the worker fired from the CDC global health centre. 'What this administration is doing, whether it's RFK, Trump or Doge, is so antithetical to my own values that I can't work there any more.'
As for those continuing to labour under Kennedy's regime, there is not much hope for the future. 'It's the perpetual anxiety, it's the lack of knowing anything that is going on. There is no plan in place,' said the global health specialist in Building 21. 'This will have real consequences for people both here in America and overseas. It breaks my heart.'