As diseases loom, CDC's response to measles deaths stirs fears about agency's reliability

David J. Sencer CDC Museum at the Edward R. Roybal campus, the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. CDC is the national public health agency of the United States, under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). hapabapa/Getty Images/iStock Editorial hide caption

The worst measles resurgence in the U.S. in decades keeps growing. Vaccination rates keep falling . Flu, COVID-19, and RSV keep coming back. Against this backdrop, many public health experts are worried about the reliability of health information coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Red flag. Red alert," says Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned last year as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protest what he called political interference at the agency.

Daskalakis and other independent public health authorities around the country are alarmed by how the CDC handled two deaths that Pennsylvania state officials recently blamed on measles . Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the unprecedented step of questioning the deaths , and the CDC removed them from the agency's website .

"When they raise doubt on the adjudication that a state may have made around a death, that is highly problematic," says Daskalakis. "This is dangerous."

Usually, when someone dies from measles, the state where the tragedy happened determines the cause of death and reports the death to the CDC so the agency can alert the public, doctors and health officials around the country. The CDC usually defers to the state's determination.

So Kennedy's public dispute with the state and the CDC's response is concerning for what it may mean for the relationship between states and federal health officials, who have to work closely to protect the public, Daskalakis and others say. That relationship has already become strained under the Trump administration.

"What we have been seeing, that got amplified even more with these measles cases, is a breakdown in the coordination and trust between states and the federal government," says Dr. Anne Zink , a senior fellow at the Yale School of Public Health who previously served as Alaska's chief medical officer and president of the Association for State and Territorial Health Officers. "That to me is a significant concern. These partnerships are critical and essential to making us healthy and well."