Health

The Exodus

The people who read the labels for a living, leaving the building.

1. Mar 2025
   Peter Marks, the FDA's top vaccine regulator, forced outHis resignation letter said the secretary "wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies."CBS News
2. Apr 2025
   20,000 people cut from HHS — a quarter of the departmentAbout 2,400 from the CDC, 3,500 from the FDA and 1,200 from the NIH, by the department's own plan.Government Executive
3. Jun 2025
   All 17 members of the CDC's vaccine advisory committee, fired at onceReplaced within days by eight hand-picked appointees, several of them public vaccine skeptics; one withdrew during the very financial-conflicts review the firing was said to cure.CNN
4. Aug 2025
   Susan Monarez, fired 28 days into the job — the first Senate-confirmed CDC director ever dismissedBy her account, for refusing to approve vaccine votes sight-unseen. Four senior officials resigned within a day; some were escorted from the building.Washington Post
5. Dec 2025
   The replacement panel dropped the 30-year universal hepatitis-B birth dose8 to 3, reclassified as "individual decision-making" for newborns. The birth dose had driven infant hepatitis B down since 1991.STAT News
6. Feb 2026
   The CDC's third leader in six monthsThe NIH director now runs both agencies at once. No permanent director has been confirmed; the surgeon general's chair has sat empty through both outbreak years.STAT News
7. Sep 2025
   Four states formed their own vaccine-guidance alliance; ten more and New York City followed within two weeksRoughly 50 million people on the West Coast schedule alone. Fifteen governors later stood up a standing alliance advised by a former CDC director — a shadow CDC in all but name.Washington State DOH
8. Jun 2026
   The pediatricians and the obstetricians published their own schedulesThe AAP broke from the federal schedule for the first time; ACOG resigned its advisory seat and issued a maternal schedule endorsed by 13 medical societies. A federal judge stayed the federal changes in March.ACOG

Departures dated to the announcement. The routing-around — states and medical societies issuing their own guidance — is listed at the same weight, because that is the second half of the same story.