AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Anjali Kamat.

ANJALI KAMAT: More than 11,000 people across 41 states in the country have been sickened by the foodborne parasite cyclosporiasis. Food safety experts have tracked one pocket of the outbreak, that sickened 2,000 people and sent 98 to the hospital, to iceberg lettuce grown in Mexico and distributed by food giant Taylor Farms, the largest produce supplier in the United States. Recalled lettuce was distributed and sold in at least 27 states. The numbers of cases are still climbing, and all sources of contamination in these latest outbreaks may never be identified.

A key part of the food safety system in the United States is the FDA’s FoodNet surveillance program, which is a collaboration between the federal government and state agencies. When billions of dollars in public health funding were slashed at the beginning of the Trump administration, FoodNet stopped its mandatory tracking for Cyclospora and five other pathogens, including listeria, a bacteria that is fatal in 30% of cases.

Mass government layoffs are also a factor. The CDC lab that specializes in the Cyclospora parasite was reduced from a team of 11 to just three.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the resurgence of the measles that began last year has reached a 35-year high, with at least 2,300 cases, three deaths, including two children. The CDC set a goal in 1978 to eliminate measles in the United States and achieved eradication status in the year 2000, following decades of vaccination efforts — this the year the U.S. will lose that status.

There’s so much to discuss when it comes to public health in the United States right now. For more, we’re joined by Debra Houry. She’s the former chief medical officer at the CDC, resigned in August last year in protest over political interference at the agency and the firing of the CDC Director Susan Monarez. Dr. Houry is a board-certified emergency physician, professor at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health.

Well, it looks like it’s a real blank show here in the United States, Dr. Houry. But if you can start off by explaining what cyclosporiasis is, how it has spread, and if you think it is related to the massive cuts to the staff at the CDC? What, almost a third have been laid off or fired or have left since the Trump administration came into office.

DR. DEBRA HOURY: Absolutely. Well, so, Cyclospora is a parasite, and it is found in foods such as lettuce, vegetables, cilantro and certain fruits. And we see it every year, usually a couple hundred cases. And by washing foods, you know, really well, and certainly cooking them to temperatures over 150 degrees, you can prevent a lot of these cases.

But what has happened this time is, because there have been significant cuts to CDC and FDA, and as part of FoodNet they are no longer tracking it mandatorily, we don’t have as good of a — really, a lens on what is happening. And so, we’ve seen, you know, close to 11,000 confirmed or suspected cases now. That is, you know, four to five times more than I am aware of. And what is concerning about this is, you know, it’s not just a simple food poisoning. It can be diarrhea that can last for several weeks. It needs to be treated by antibiotics. And several people have been hospitalized by it.

ANJALI KAMAT: And, Dr. Houry, can you explain more what FoodNet is and what the problems are when you stop this long-term tracking?

DR. DEBRA HOURY: So, FoodNet was really kind of like — I talk about CDC as disease detectives. And so, it was a system that, you know, tracked. States would report if they had several different pathogens, like E. coli, Salmonella, you know, many of those food poisonings that we’re very familiar with. And Cyclospora was one of those.

But when funding levels did not keep up with what was needed to maintain it, you know, several of these pathogens were cut. At the same time, as we’ve seen with USAID funding, that funded a lot of the malaria and parasitic work at CDC, and those cuts had an impact. That, coupled with, you know, the DOGE cuts to overall CDC workforce, really has just left our country hampered in being able to detect and respond to these outbreaks.

ANJALI KAMAT: Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended the Trump administration’s handling of the Cyclospora outbreak that sickened thousands of people nationwide. He was questioned by ABC News reporter Elizabeth Schulze last week.

HHS SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: We do have the outbreak under control. We have done extensive forensics, epidemiological forensics. And we’ve identified the — the source of the outbreak. We — and the companies that are involved have implemented a recall.

ELIZABETH SCHULZE: Any response to some of the criticism that the cuts to the federal agencies under your leadership has slowed the response to the outbreak?

HHS SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Those — those criticisms are invalid. We’ve had no cuts in our surveillance program.

ANJALI KAMAT: Dr. Houry, what do you think of RFK Jr.’s response? Do you trust him? I mean, the number of scientists working on this at the CDC has dropped from 11 to three. Who do you hold responsible?

DR. DEBRA HOURY: So, I would invite the secretary to actually meet with the CDC scientists and come to CDC and get a briefing. When I was chief medical officer there, we never spoke to him about measles or avian influenza, Ebola. We offered to brief the secretary. He doesn’t really have a good, I think, understanding of what CDC does and where the cuts are. I recall last year he talked about mistakes were made when people that did lead were laid off, and those scientists were eventually brought back.

I don’t know how we can say Cyclospora is under control when there’s over 10,000 cases, it’s in greater than 30 states, and you look at other infectious disease outbreaks. The U.S. is really at a tipping point when you look at measles, whooping cough, all these vaccine-preventable diseases, as well, and the secretary is responsible for this.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk about measles and the significance of the fact that the CDC set as its goal, what, like more than half a century ago, to eliminate measles, achieved that status a quarter of a century ago, and now this year will lose that status of eradication, that we’re talking about a surge in measles, and what this means, Dr. Houry, and how it relates to these cuts?

DR. DEBRA HOURY: So, unfortunately, you know, the secretary has promoted a lot of misinformation around vaccines, and specifically about the measles vaccine. During the middle of an outbreak, he talked about the vaccine having fetal parts in it, and promoted things like vitamins, as well as therapies that weren’t licensed for measles, such as antibiotics and steroids. That’s not what parents and the U.S. public need to hear in the middle of an outbreak.

Measles is highly contagious, and we have seen several outbreaks across the United States, with now a record number of cases in over 30 years. What’s concerning to me is it’s not a harmless childhood disease. We’ve seen several hundred hospitalizations. Children are missing school, and several have died. Many years from now, we will also see that some will go on to develop a brain infection and die, and many will have their immune memory wiped out. So, this is not a harmless disease; it has long-term consequences.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking about vaccines, on another issue, I mean, you have, very interestingly, Anthony Fauci is testifying before the Senate on the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And then you have this exposé in The Wall Street Journal that President Trump is reportedly pressuring RFK Jr., the health secretary, to more aggressively push for policies that would further slash childhood vaccine recommendations, reporting that the issue came up during a lunch in May when Trump confronted RFK on why he isn’t doing more to probe a widely debunked link between childhood vaccines and autism. Many might have thought it was RFK who was pushing this, but, in fact, Trump is putting pressure on him and even weighing sacking him, firing him. What are your thoughts about this and the core issue of the connection between vaccines and autism?

DR. DEBRA HOURY: So, vaccines and autism has been widely studied. It’s been probably one of the most studied things when it comes to autism. I think autism is a serious problem in this country, and we should be doing more to study it. But something that’s been studied for over 30 years and has not been found linked to autism is not where I’d be spending taxpayer money. I’d be spending it on things like environmental factors, looking at genetic predispositions, other infectious diseases. We need to seriously study autism.

I think when you have a finding you want and you’re backwalking it to really get the science to fit the data, that’s not how we should be doing things. Science is about having a hypothesis, a question, investigating it, and then finding out what the cause is, not doing that backwards, like the secretary does.

Although the report said that President Trump was pushing the secretary to do this, I don’t know that. But what I can tell you is the secretary, you know, for a decade has been anti-vax and, you know, has sued the CDC and fired all the vaccine committee members. So I really don’t think he needs any encouragement from the president to do this.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Dr. Houry, if you could explain again for our listeners and viewers why you quit last year?

DR. DEBRA HOURY: I quit because I saw vaccine-preventable deaths going up. I saw political interference in the work we were doing. I saw programs being dismantled. And I was concerned for the health of Americans in this country, so I could not stand by.

ANJALI KAMAT: And you saved your emails, Dr. Houry? Can you talk about that?

DR. DEBRA HOURY: Yes. So, just, you know, as good clinical practice, or as being a capstone official, the role that I had at CDC, my emails are preserved. And so, when there were conversations to where I had concerns about conflicts of interest, how decisions were being made, or just so that we could track, you know, institutional memory, I documented all of that. And when I had concerns, I certainly raised them, both verbally and in writing.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Dr. Houry, the connection between the massive cuts at the CDC and domestic dealing with measles to these parasites, to what’s happening overseas and the evisceration of USAID, Agency for International Development? In our headlines today, we just reported on the thousands of cases, for example, of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The connection between these two and the lack of tracking, and what that means for global health?

DR. DEBRA HOURY: So, I think it’s very concerning. You know, Secretary Rubio is talking about America first, but the changes to the USAID funding and PEPFAR funding to CDC will result in significant less presence in countries. Currently, CDC is in about 60 countries. And that means that we’re working closely with health departments there, the ministries of health, and the U.S. has a good eye on what is happening. But with the changes to funding, many of these countries will no longer have CDC staff there, meaning we’re not going to know when there’s that global health threat. And years ago in Uganda, because of the support that CDC and USAID had provided, local staff were able to quickly detect the outbreak, do lab testing and control it. That is why we need to have a presence overseas to really protect Americans here from health threats, both in the U.S. and abroad.

AMY GOODMAN: You referred to PEPFAR, but for people to understand, that was the George W. Bush program dealing with AIDS in Africa, now AIDS going up and HIV deaths in South Africa, for example, because of the cut in funding. If you could end by addressing this?

DR. DEBRA HOURY: Yeah. When you take support away from lifesaving programs, you are absolutely going to see people die as a result. Both in the U.S. and globally, public health matters. When it works, you often don’t know, because you’re saving lives. But when you take it away, we see those consequences today.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Debra Houry, former chief medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC. She resigned last year to protest political interference and the firing of the CDC director. Dr. Houry is board-certified emergency physician, professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health.

Coming up, we look at the Cockroach movement in India, where weeks of protests by hundreds of thousands of young people led to the resignation of India’s education minister. Now the Modi government is cracking down. We’ll talk about the response of the protesters. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Ghadar Machao” by Sonny Singh in our Democracy Now! studio.