Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, one of the nation’s most visible public health leaders and a longtime trusted voice for LGBTQ+ communities, has resigned from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He denounced what he describes as a wholesale dismantling of science under President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Daskalakis posted his blistering resignation letter on X and Instagram on Wednesday evening. In it, he said he would step down as director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases on Thursday, citing irreconcilable ethical and scientific concerns.
Honestly, he was in that position to do a job which he is no longer able or allowed to do. And, worse, he was going to be forced to do things that are unethical. Fired or quit, with this administration it makes no difference either way.
The overwhelming majority of the voting eligible population demonstrated that this is what they want, either by voting directly for it or by not voting at all. Not that I’m saying this how he feels, but I can understand if he’s thinking “I’m not the magical
negrohomo who’s going to save the country from itself.”As a fellow LGBTQ+ citizen, I am just tired, tired. I spent decades working towards some semblance of equality where even many of my allies were otherwise of the opinion “I have no problem with gay people, BUT” – then would come up with things like “I think we should let them have civil unions instead” or “all you have to do to not get AIDS is use condoms” or “if they [those other gay men but not you] didn’t act so flamboyant in public, nobody would care what they do in the privacy of their own homes”.
I guess what I’m saying is, it’s complicated, and I don’t know that I wouldn’t make the same decision.