Hundreds of current and former employees for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department have signed a letter blasting agency leader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his handling of a recent shooting at a CDC building in Atlanta and, they claim, his ongoing spread of vaccine misinformation.

Washington

Hundreds of current and former Health and Human Services (HHS) employees have signed a letter criticizing agency leader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his handling of a recent shooting at a CDC building in Atlanta. The letter accuses Kennedy of continuing to spread conspiracy theories about the CDC and vaccines, which staff claim contributed to the attack and ongoing harassment of CDC employees.

The letter makes three specific requests: that Kennedy stop spreading inaccurate health information, affirm the agency's scientific integrity, and guarantee the safety of the HHS workforce. The incident has also coincided with the firing of over 600 CDC employees, many of whom worked on gun violence and injury prevention. Former staff expressed distress over the firings and the process, citing feelings of alienation and concern for the future of public health efforts.

HHS staffers blast RFK Jr. over CDC shooting, vaccine claims

There are new details about that August 8th shooting at a CDC building in Atlanta. We learned today that the shooter tried to breach the campus two days before the attack, but security stopped him. Hundreds of current and former Health and Human Services employees have signed a letter blasting agency leader, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for his handling of the attack, and they claim his ongoing spread of vaccine disinformation, which they say led to the attack. CBS News medical contributor, Dr. Selene Gounder, joins me now. So, Dr. Gounder, what does the letter itself say? The letter is blunt. They're saying that instead of standing with them after the attack, Secretary Kennedy has continued to spread conspiracy theories about the CDC, about mRNA vaccines, and other work that the CDC has been doing. And they're saying that this is dangerous, and they've made three specific requests. One, that he stop spreading inaccurate health information. Two, that he infirm the agency's scientific integrity. And three, guarantee the safety of the HHS workforce. And by the way, it's not just the shooting, it's ongoing harassment since then. I've been told by a number of CDC staffers that they're getting calls with questions, are you resilient? And then they play the audio of gunshots over the phone. So, ironically, some of the people that were fired as part of this, over 600 people that were let go today, were people who were working on gun violence and injury prevention at the CDC. Help viewers with that, catch up to that. The firings of the CDC, what are those about? Well, some of these have been on hold. People have been on administrative leave for some time waiting to see what was going to happen. I spoke to a number of them over the course of the afternoon. One former CDC employee told me, I started here as a college intern and spent nearly 26 years here. This work was my heart and my purpose, and having it stripped away hurts deeply. Other people were upset about being called lazy bureaucrats. They said the experience during the last several months of being on administrative leave, where they've been cut off from their coworkers and others, alienating and lonely, and they said that the process was traumatizing without regard, without humanity. And these are people who've dedicated their lives to public health, to preventing disease, to saving lives, and they're very dedicated to that cause, and so are now worried that the progress they've made on so many different fronts is gonna grind to a halt.

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