Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Sunday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. “failed” in his response to a recent shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters the day before.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation identified Patrick Joseph White, 30, as the gunman who fired on the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, where DeKalb County police officer David Rose was killed. Adams offered his condolences to Rose’s family and friends.
Adams said he wanted to be clear since Kennedy “has not been” that violence doesn’t resolve frustration or anger at the CDC’s “system.”
“We have to find better, more peaceful ways to express our concerns and work towards solutions. How you respond to a crisis defines a leader, and quite frankly, Secretary Kennedy has failed in his first major test in this regard,” Adams said on CBS News’s Face the Nation.
“It took him 18 hours to issue a tepid response to these horrific shootings, and that’s not even considering how his inflammatory rhetoric in the past has actually contributed to a lot of what’s going on,” Adams said.
Kennedy issued a statement on X saying health workers should not face violence while “working to protect the health of others.” He also said the Department of Health and Human Services is “supporting CDC staff on the ground and across the agency.”
Adams emphasized Kennedy’s past comment that he would “drain the cesspool” at the CDC if he became president. Adams also said Kennedy’s statement on Saturday still did not “unequivocally” condemn the violence.
FUTURE OF CANCER TREATMENT UNCERTAIN WITH MRNA VACCINE CUTS
The former surgeon general also took issue with Kennedy’s decision to cut development of 22 mRNA vaccines, saying mRNA technology helped develop the COVID-19 vaccine in record time. He claimed “people are going to die” with funding being cut for this technology.
The 22 affected projects are worth nearly $500 million, including a vaccine contract with Moderna for H5N1 bird flu. Kennedy said mRNA technology “poses more risk than benefits for these respiratory viruses,” and the department will prioritize developing whole-virus vaccines instead of vaccines designed to trigger immunity to only portions of a virus.
