Extended Interview: Dr. Deb Houry, Former CDC Chief Medical Officer

0:00Doctor, thank you very much for making time. My pleasure. So you were the chief medical officer at the CDC until August last year. You spent 11 years at the agency. When President Trump was elected, he did so with the alliance of the Make America Healthy Again movement. And the secretary that he put in place said the CDC is the most corrupt federal agency in all of HHS. What did you think him being in charge was going to mean for you? Well, certainly I was a little concerned, but under the first Trump administration, things went really well overall. We saw things like suicide prevention get started under the first administration.

0:41So I was cautiously optimistic. And then I was also the transition lead for the agency. So I knew that our goal was to really position ourselves to work with the new administration and that hopefully if we could actually meet with the secretary, present data and align with some of his priorities, we wanted safe food and water as well, that maybe we could find some common ground. But I was worried. I know that you were asked by the Senate committee that oversees the health agencies to share some of the documents and emails that you had collected during your time leading up to your departure. Why were you saving your emails?

1:20You know, I think just in general good clinical practice, you know, I always documented on patients. And so similarly, as I was, you know, overseeing many decisions or part of discussions, I thought it was important to really document how those decisions were being made, particularly when I had concerns that there were conflicts of interest that weren't being taken care of when there were issues around scientific integrity and political interference. So, and despite all that, you know, I was a capstone unofficial, which meant any of my emails always are retained through Freedom of Information Act.

1:57So I just thought it was prudent to really document what was going on. I mean, at one period of time, you were actually the acting CDC director. So the first few days, I was the acting CDC director, although I was never named by the Trump administration. But through the memo that had been left and our operating plan, I stepped into that role. So why were you, you said it was good clinical practice. Did you also feel like you were creating a paper trail? Yes, but I would also say it was the paper trail, but it was also when there's different inputs, different politicals that would come and go. I wanted to show how we were making decisions and if there were concerns, why that was there.

2:41I knew that history at some point would look back on this, and so I wanted to make sure that we had that historical record. And that's how 250 of your emails and documents were made public by the Senate committee. What was happening inside the CDC that made you say this is going to be historic? It happened almost from the very beginning under the new administration. Within the first week or two, we started getting executive orders where we took down hundreds of websites. And I thought, this is highly unusual. You know, science doesn't change based on who is in office. And so when these things were happening, I knew this was different than before.

3:24I also didn't brief the secretary, which was very different than prior administrations. And when we had many requests coming from political appointees on things that had happened 30 years ago that didn't really need to be relitigated at a taxpayer expense, I became very concerned that data, science and facts would not be enough. So the websites you're talking about being taken down, this was because of the executive order to remove references to gender ideology. Yes, and that included the term gender. And gender was in many of our data sets. gender of animals. You know, we had transgender guidance around MPOX.

4:08All of that we were told to take down. So it included the CDC and FDA pulling down how physicians should treat STDs. That seems important information. It's very important information, but it referred to transgender and you couldn't just do a word replace and say we highlighted things like this that, you know, and again, as a doctor, it was very concerning to me that if you've got patients and doctors that need specific clinical guidance to not be able to provide that information. So that's when we really started trying to document concerns. We raised them to the department. Over time, we did get most of the materials back up with really an asterisk saying this was, you know, pre-executive order.

4:55But the concern was really, and I think I said this many times, including to the new administration. Science doesn't change. The data should stand on its own. You would never want to have that inconsistency over each administration. And this was my fourth presidential administration. You also documented a scramble on the inside to get some of the sites back up. And this happened to be just a day after the secretary had finished his confirmation hearings. Why? We were told that there was a concern it could hurt the secretary's confirmation that if vaccine-related information was missing from the website, that it could reflect poorly on him.

5:37Specifically information about vaccines? Yes. Because? There was a concern that the secretary had expressed anti-vaccine sentiments and that if CDC, as he was coming on board, didn't have information on vaccines on the website that it had to do with his hearing and his direction. So we got an email from the acting CDC director Friday night to get those websites back up. And then beginning at 830 a.m. on a Saturday morning, myself and several other CDC staff would meet regularly with HHS political leaders to go through our process to get some of those websites back up. So all of these have been taken down because you're trying to comply with what the president wanted.

6:20Correct. But then realizing it might hurt votes to confirm the secretary, you had to scramble and put some of them back up. That's our understanding. And to be very clear, when we took the websites down, we flagged that many of these websites contained information such as that. I don't think they understood the volume or the impact until media and others started noticing all the websites that were gone. You know, during the secretary's confirmation hearing, he said all decisions would be free of political influence and guided by science. Yes. But you received an email from his chief of staff telling you of the, quote, absolute need for political review of major decisions at the CDC.

7:06How different is that from typical management? That has never happened before. Usually, certainly there would be political review of high-level decisions, but not every decision. And scientists' careers would be at the table. I can tell you through my eight months when I was the transition lead and the only career in the office of the director, I was not part of most of the conversations with the political appointees at HHS. And did most of those political appointees have medical degrees? I don't think any in HHS at that time had medical degrees. We had one person at CDC who was a political appointee who had a medical degree.

7:44He didn't come for the first few months. And in the office of the director, we had no one with a medical background or even a public health background. So the decisions being made were by individuals who had no medical background? No medical background and not only no medical background, no science background. And for many of them, no background in government. And I want to be clear, it's certainly okay to have different perspectives, you know, and different expertise. But then you want to make sure that the scientists and experts are also being heard and part of those decisions, and we weren't.

8:17You said you never briefed RFK Jr., but who were the advisors around him that you were interacting with? So very few. You know, our acting CDC director, Dr. Menarez, was one of the people I would relay information to. certainly our chief of staff also a political appointee we had different HHS counselors and those are usually representatives you know to the secretary that would interact with us and so they would interact with us one was a physician who started around April or May Dr. Ren Archer but other than that most had no medical background they had come from different think tank organizations, and in general, they didn't want to interface with career staff at all.

9:03I want to talk about the flu. Yes. Because this stood out in some of the emails that were made public. So back in 2024, 2025, this was a really intense flu season, the worst in more than 15 years. Nearly 300 kids died. At that time, HHS had this awareness campaign called Wild to Mild, And it encouraged everyone, it said, six months and older to get a flu shot. So one day after Secretary Kennedy is sworn in, there are then a flurry of emails saying this is a direct request. That was the language used from the secretary to pull down all of those ads. Why? It was one of those things I got calls from our communication staff saying this has happened.

9:55And I first thought there was a misunderstanding where children are dying. It's an active flu season. It's not like flu is over. And we'd already paid for these for these ads. So it didn't make any sense. And so I brought it to our political leaders and brought it back to our communication staff and asked them to please relay back to the department. Surely this isn't what you want. And then we got a note back. It's a direct request from the secretary. And in those emails, you can see a conversation that must have been happening amongst you saying, this is one of the worst flu seasons ever. Why would we do this?

10:32Children are dying. And you're saying, can we keep up parts of this, change or tweak the message? Yes. And when CDC puts out messages, it's not something that is just, you know, generated quickly. These were message tested. You know, these were professionally developed. and they had chosen wild to mild to show that like you might still get flu but it'll be mild and so it was the messaging you know that was meant to really help people understand the importance of vaccination so the communications official is writing in these emails that the leaders you were among them yes pushed back and said can we emphasize informed consent can we just tweak the message a little bit and again it came back take it down yes do you have any way of gauging the impact of that?

11:21Is there one? We don't, you know, but I think during a bad flu season, if there's less messaging to remind people you can still get a flu shot, it's still beneficial, it has harm to the American public. And, you know, since the secretary has been in office, we have seen vaccinations across the board for childhood illnesses go down. The secretary has said he thinks the vocal issues that he struggles with are a possible side effect of the flu vaccine. Was any of that personal belief or experience shared with you? It was not. I read about it after I left CDC. And what I would say is when we looked retrospectively, that is not one of the side effects of flu vaccine.

12:05There are many other things that can result in that vocal cord paralysis that the secretary has. and you know some of it has to do with different you know uses of substances different medical conditions so I think you need to approach it as a scientist and you might have a personal belief about something but what does the science show and what's the risks and benefits what are the risks to the American public of stopping a flu vaccine at the height of a flu outbreak significant Okay. Let's continue to talk about some of the other vaccines and some of the emails that we saw here. Now it's April and the country's experienced its worst measles outbreak since 2000.

12:50You're receiving a lot of messages asking for information about measles from Kennedy AIDS, but it was backward looking. It wasn't about the ongoing outbreak. And you wrote, active measles response has to take priority. Why did you feel you had to say that to the people running the health agency? One would think you wouldn't need to, but as we were trying to support Texas and other states, we had limited staff as staff had been fired under Doge, trying to respond to an active measles outbreak and also trying to support the secretary using appropriate talking points. He would say things like there's fetal parts and vaccines, and I sent an email to correct that and said, how can we help him?

13:37How can we make sure it's the right messaging? During all of that, we also get requests for 15 years of data on every single measles case and were there any other diseases that those people had that died from measles. Same time, a former group of the secretaries put out a statement saying that some of the measles deaths weren't due to measles. So to me, it seemed like they were looking through CDC data, these requests, you know, to answer some questions from other organizations or potentially promote their beliefs. Again, not based on science or reality, but trying to answer an agenda that was already in place.

14:17Which organizations? It was the Children's Health Defense. That's where RFK worked. That was his. Yes. He was a leader of that organization. And sued some of the vaccine makers, as I recall. In the email exchange, it stood out that you seem to be using very diplomatic language, very careful language, but you're offering to help the secretary. You said, can I help him with his talking points? Why were you so concerned? It impacts lives. You know, when you look at him talking about misinformation on measles vaccines, people are going to be less likely to get the measles vaccine in an active outbreak.

15:02We had children being hospitalized. We had children dying from measles. We needed people to respond during a measles outbreak and get vaccinated if they weren't. Instead, he talked about healers and treatments around like steroids and antibiotics and even vitamin A. we actually saw vitamin A toxicity cases in hospitals. People were taking too much vitamin A because there had been messaging that it was helpful for measles. Once you have it, not as preventable. Correct. Once you have it and then limited amounts and, you know, with a doctor's oversight. You talked about public messaging by the secretary.

15:42In one of the emails, you explained vaccines are made by growing the viruses in fetal cells, But the measles vaccine does not include DNA particles, nor does it have what Kennedy described as, quote, a lot of debris from aborted fetus. When you wrote out the clarification for the staff, did they even respond to that? My political staff did. They thanked me for the information. And I think over time they got used to me doing that because I would see the secretary tweeting about something or on TV. staff would be alarmed or, you know, I'd hear from outside partners, can you do anything about this?

16:21And each time I just tried to be factual and helpful, didn't get responses from the department and certainly the secretary didn't correct what he was saying. There was no thought of clarifying the record. No. It's interesting because when the secretary made those remarks, he was talking about people in religious communities who objected to taking the vaccine and that this fear was why they weren't taking it. But he didn't want to clarify that that was wrong? I can't say if he didn't want to, but I've certainly never heard him clarify. You also point out in that same TV appearance that the CDC was not doing studies that he said they were doing, and he referred to diabetes statistics that were wrong.

17:04A hundred fold off, yes. A hundred fold off. No retraction, no correction, no clarification. No correction. And this is where I just thought, you know, if the secretary was speaking publicly, if we could provide him correct statistics, correct information, or maybe even a briefing on what CDC did, that might help him when he was speaking publicly. But we weren't taken up on that. But you were offering briefings. Multiple times. Do you know if the secretary wanted them or was his staff turning away the medical professionals trying to give him information? I don't know where it was turned down. So the push against some of these vaccines is a theme here.

17:46Currently, the American Academy of Pediatrics is suing Secretary Kennedy in federal court due to changes in the childhood vaccine schedule, as well as the firing of the Federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, ACIP or ACIP. before all of this erupted into the federal courts and public view, what was happening on the inside? It was pure chaos. You know, it was one of those things to where we would hear from some of the political appointees that they were looking at the vaccine committee and they wanted to either get rid of all of the vaccine committee members or at least have enough to have the votes for the administration.

18:27And we pointed out that it doesn't change administration to administration. You know, there's a couple spots that come open each time. It should be based on expertise, should be based on science, and that there was a process for doing it, including ethics and conflict of interest. And I think what was disheartening is the secretary had talked about CDC and conflicts of interest and patents. We looked, found very few conflicts of interest over two decades for the vaccine committee members, yet when the secretary and the political appointees brought on these new vaccine committee members, I raised concerns that they hadn't gone through the ethics and conflicts of interest process as others had.

19:09They eventually did, but they first said, it's okay. Our own ethics and conflicts of interest staff at CDC weren't aware and hadn't been involved and had to become engaged. If you're talking about radical transparency and wanting to minimize conflicts of interest, that should be at the top of the things you're doing for the American public. What's interesting in these documents is you see not that you are resisting the request, but that you are going and investigating and cross-checking to see if there were conflicts of interest. And then you came back with what you found. Yes. Which was contrary to the belief.

19:50And I think, maybe naively, I hoped that by presenting facts, that facts would matter or help. But I'm also an ER doc. You know, I always just present the facts and try to do what I can to solve the problem. One of your colleagues who worked on immunization studies wrote that in a meeting, Stuart Burns, a Kennedy ally, said the goal was to, quote, depoliticize the committee by installing people aligned with the secretary's agenda. And it's clear here that you're upset by this. Yes. I think you want robust discussion. And to me, depoliticizing something doesn't mean you take away voices that might disagree with you.

20:32I was supportive of putting more people on the committee that would align with the secretary, but not to sway votes. And that should be based on expertise. And this was the clear direction that they didn't care what the expertise was. They wanted to align with an agenda. And you should never be following an agenda and backfilling the science and the data. It should be the research and what is needed to protect health that drives the agenda. What was the agenda? The agenda was things like taking hepatitis B vaccines away from children or babies. It was removing thimerosal, a mercury-type compound, from all vaccines, despite the science that showed it wasn't linked to autism.

21:15And as we've seen now, changing the childhood vaccine schedule to reflect another country's, Denmark's, which is certainly not similar to our health care system. These were preconceived notions that they wanted to do, even though the science shows how many babies were saved by the hepatitis B vaccine. And Senator Cassidy has spoken publicly, you know, as a hepatologist around the importance of that hepatitis B vaccine. But they came in clearly saying, we don't want to give it at birth. You wrote that the HHS lawyers told you, quote, if candidates actively promoted misinformation, were fired from a university, or do not have expertise, they could still move forward.

22:01Yes. So I had called our CDC lawyers when I heard about some names potentially being considered. And I was concerned because these were not what I would have considered experts if you've been fired from a job or promote misinformation. And so I called CDC's Office of General Counsel to get advice. And what I was told was if they didn't have conflicts of interest, the department could still put them forward. And if the names came to me to sign off on, at that point, I could raise concerns. The names didn't come to me to sign off on. You're the chief medical officer at the CDC at this moment. Yes.

22:36And the names were not coming to you. They didn't come to me. Usually they would have because all the federal advisory committees would come through the CDC. But since this point it was being directed by HHS, we didn't have a CDC director. And so the secretary was serving in that essentially delegation of authority. He was determining who was on the vaccine committee. So the names did not come to me. So he was putting people on the committee, signing off on it, even though they had not gone through a conflict of interest background check or ethics review. He'd put those names forward when they did get put on the committee.

23:12I believe they had completed the conflicts of interest. Because that was something you had raised here, that the White House had cleared them, but they hadn't gone. They hadn't gone through it. But then after I raised the concern, they went through the final process. A growing number of states, 29 plus D.C., have announced they're no longer following CDC recommendations as a benchmark for childhood vaccines. They said this is too much. Do you think that public health and faith in public health can be restored? I think the secretary has caused a lot of irreparable harm. And when you look at many of the polls out there, the trust in public health, specifically CDC, has decreased dramatically over 20 points in many polls.

23:56That's really difficult to recover from. And when states are removing links to the CDC website and following other medical organizations, I don't know how you build back that trust overnight. Summer break is here. I want my kids to have fun, but I also want them to keep their skills sharp. Between vacations and sports, I need something that fits our busy schedule without adding stress. That's why we use IXL. IXL is an award-winning online platform that helps kids truly understand what they're learning, whether they're building math confidence, strengthening reading and writing skills, or reviewing science concepts.

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25:16Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer's rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. Autism and finding out more about it is a real focus for the secretary. Before, when he was running for president himself, he put this at the top of his agenda as well.

25:56A lot of families are looking to him with a lot of hope. Do you trust what is being conducted in terms of research into autism? Absolutely not. And that's unfortunate because autism is a significant issue in our country and worldwide. But there's not a single answer to it. You know, we know that 40 to 60 percent is linked to some sort of genetic ideology. There's environmental factors. There's probably infectious disease factors. So you need to really have a robust field of study around autism versus, again, looking at a single question. And what we saw was back in February and March, we were asked to look at autism.

26:39And we proposed several different ideas, including a large study looking at autism and working with NIH. And what came back to us was, no, we want to look at the vaccine safety data link data for autism. So narrowing in on vaccines and autism versus what we had proposed. And even more concerning is when my staff reached out to NIH scientists who did autism work, they weren't aware that the NIH acting director and some of the other NIH politicals had reached out to us about looking at vaccine and autism and CDC data. How is that possible? I guess there wasn't communication between the NIH politicals and the NIH experts on autism.

27:27And after that, there was no more communication between our scientists on autism and the NIH scientists on autism around that topic. They didn't trust. The Kennedy aides did not trust the professionals within the CDC and the NIH. Is that fair? I would say that's fair. In your emails, there's one from the director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. And she said they're looking in how to respond to questions about vaccine safety and autism. And that's when you said, not until we're asked and don't go so narrow. Whatever happened to that? Was there ever a CDC study launched?