“A kind of people wrote in his departure assertion that he identifies pregnant ladies as pregnant individuals, in order that’s not somebody who we wish on this administration,” Leavitt informed reporters at a press convention Thursday.
Leavitt’s remark was in clear reference to the resignation letter of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, during which he acknowledged, “the current change within the grownup and kids’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Individuals and pregnant individuals.”
Daskalakis resigned alongside Drs. Deb Houry and Dan Jernigan, two different high officers who criticized Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s adjustments to the company’s vaccine advisory board and different vaccine insurance policies.
Their resignations got here shortly after Susan Monarez was fired from her place as CDC director, amid a number of different adjustments inside the well being division.
“I’m unable to serve in an surroundings that treats CDC as a instrument to generate insurance policies and supplies that don’t mirror scientific actuality and are designed to harm quite than to enhance the general public’s well being,” Daskalakis wrote.
Leavitt informed reporters, “If persons are not aligned with the president’s imaginative and prescient and the secretary’s imaginative and prescient to make our nation wholesome once more, then we’ll gladly present them the door.”
Daskalakis had the chance to answer Leavitt’s assertion on Thursday evening’s episode of CNN’s “The Supply” with Kaitlan Collins. He mentioned he has at all times been an advocate for the LGBTQ neighborhood and “finds it outrageous” that the Trump administration “is making an attempt to erase transgender individuals.”
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“I very particularly used the time period pregnant individuals, and really particularly added my pronouns on the finish of my resignation letter to make the purpose that I’m defying this … horrible technique at making an attempt to erase individuals and never permitting them to specific their identities,” Daskalakis mentioned. “So I settle for the word from the press secretary and counter that with, I don’t care.”
