A federal labor union has accused the Department of Health and Human Services of “targeting science” amid hundreds of layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, The Hill reported on Friday.

Yolanda Jacobs, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, Local 2883, said the firings at HHS “gut frontline science and shut down life-saving public health programs.”

“The layoffs are not targeting inefficiency, they are targeting science,” Jacobs said. “Public health researchers and frontline scientists are being thrown out of their jobs while the country faces growing environmental, occupational, and public health crises.”

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