Washington — It is a sentence that has burned itself into the memory of American health policy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not say it quietly, but with the self-assurance of a man who knows no one will stop him: the CDC is „the most corrupt agency in HHS and perhaps in the entire government.“ A year later, one can take stock of what that sentence meant. No revolution. No abolition by decree. But a dismantling in installments, carried out with the patience of bureaucrats and the indifference of ideologues.
The numbers are unspectacular and precisely for that reason so unsettling. By May 2026, the CDC had 30 percent fewer employees than before the layoffs of early 2025 — more than 3,800 civil servants gone, according to data compiled by former federal scientists . Experienced epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, virologists. People whose knowledge cannot simply be replaced. A senior official described the agency’s condition to the New York Times with an image from the hardware store: it felt as though the CDC were being held together with bubble gum and duct tape, with employees running from crisis to crisis and nothing working the way it is supposed to .
The vocabulary of official statements from the Health Department sounds different. There, it is said that Kennedy has „returned the CDC to its core mission,“ eliminated „mission creep,“ and replaced leaders who resisted reforms. What is sold as reform is in practice a redistribution of decision-making power. Where previous administrations had two or three political appointees overseeing the CDC, there are now nearly twenty . They intervene in research agendas, request data the agency never systematically collected, and redirect funds. One example: $362,000 flowed from a program providing free vaccines to about half of American children into a study examining a long-discredited link between maternal vaccination and autism .
Vaccine policy is the most visible battleground. In June 2025, Kennedy dismissed all 17 voting members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with appointees who are largely skeptical of or opposed to vaccines . In December, the committee rescinded the universal recommendation for hepatitis B vaccination of newborns — a vaccine that has reduced infection rates among children and adolescents by 99 percent since 1991 . A Republican senator, himself a physician, subsequently called the committee „fully discredited“ .
It would be a mistake to see in this only idiosyncratic vaccine skepticism. The dismantling follows a logic that runs through all areas: the institution that is supposed to produce scientific evidence and translate it into policy is being deprived of precisely that ability. Communication is centralized, scientific publications are delayed or withheld, and the few remaining experts spend their time responding to „strange asks,“ as a former division head put it . Officials requested data on every measles case since 2010, including diagnostic codes for underlying conditions — information the CDC does not routinely collect .
The consequences are already measurable. The United States experienced its largest measles outbreak since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. The West Texas outbreak alone sickened 762 people, hospitalized 99, and killed two; 97 percent of patients were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status . A South Carolina school-based outbreak produced 997 confirmed cases across 32 schools . Meanwhile, Kennedy downplayed the outbreaks in cabinet meetings as „not unusual“ and praised physicians who treated children with measles using corticosteroids and antibiotics — treatments without proven benefit .
What is happening here is more than a series of bad personnel decisions. It is the consistent application of a conception of governance in which science is not considered a basis for policy, but one of many voices that can be outvoted politically. The irony is that the same administration that styles itself as a fighter against „Big Pharma“ and for „MAHA“ is destroying the institutional foundations needed to reliably recognize and name health risks at all. The quiet amputation of American public health agencies proceeds apace — not with a bang, but with the persistence of an administration that knows it has time.
