Reform or ruin at the CDC?

Staff members of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention protesting the dismantling of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices, at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. The CDC has lost a third of its work force this year. The Trump administration maintains that the losses are necessary, but critics say that there is no real plan, only animosity. — Melissa Golden/The New York Times

MONTHS before Robert F. Kennedy Jr became US health secretary, officials at the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention were already bracing for his arrival.

Dr Debra Houry, then the CDC’s chief medical officer, read three books by Kennedy, along with one by Dr Casey Means, a surgeon-general nominee and Kennedy ally. She reviewed Project 2025, a report from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and the America First agenda.