Drug whistleblower punished, agency finds
WASHINGTON — Federal investigators have found “reasonable grounds” that a government whistleblower was punished for speaking out against use of a drug that President Donald Trump touted to treat covid-19, his lawyers said Friday.
Dr. Rick Bright headed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services that focuses on countermeasures to infectious diseases and bioterrorism. He had received a job performance review of outstanding before he was summarily transferred last month, with his agency email cut off without warning.
Investigators with the Office of Special Counsel “made a threshold determination that [the department] violated the Whistleblower Protection Act by removing Dr. Bright from his position because he made protected disclosures in the best interest of the American public,” his lawyers Debra Katz and Lisa Banks said in a statement. The Office of Special Counsel is an agency that investigates allegations of egregious personnel practices in government.
The lawyers said investigators are requesting that Bright be temporarily reinstated for 45 days until they can complete their inquiry. Office of Special Counsel spokesman Zachary Kurz said his agency “cannot comment on or confirm the status of open investigations.”
Caitlin Oakley, spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department, said in a statement that the department “strongly disagrees with the allegations and characterizations in the complaint” and that the whole issue is a “personnel matter that is currently under review.”
“I don’t know who he is, but to me, he’s a disgruntled employee,” Trump told reporters. “If people are that unhappy, they shouldn’t work. If you’re unhappy with a company, you shouldn’t work there. Go out and get something else. But to me, he’s a disgruntled guy. And I hadn’t heard great things about him either.”
Bright has been invited to testify before a House committee next week.
Bright is a flu and infectious-disease expert with 10 years at the agency biomedical research agency. His particular focus was on vaccine development. He was reassigned to the National Institutes of Health to work on developing coronavirus testing.
In a formal complaint that his lawyers released this week, Bright described how tension built up within the Health and Human Services Department as the coronavirus arrived in the U.S.
Bright said his efforts to escalate preparedness “encountered resistance from [department] leadership, including Secretary [Alex] Azar, who appeared intent on downplaying this catastrophic event.”
Bright described a situation in which the Trump administration failed to prepare for the pandemic, then sought a quick fix by trying to rush a malaria drug to patients, though its effectiveness for covid-19 was unproved.
His complaint also detailed a frustrating attempt to jumpstart U.S. production of masks and a successful effort to secure importation of testing swabs from Italy.
But his most high-profile allegations involved hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug Trump had promoted as a “game changer.”
He said the Trump administration wanted to “flood” hot spots in New York and New Jersey with the drug.
“I witnessed government leadership rushing blindly into a potentially dangerous situation by bringing in a non-FDA approved chloroquine from Pakistan and India, from facilities that had never been approved by the FDA,” Bright said on a call with reporters earlier this week. “Their eagerness to push blindly forward without sufficient data to put this drug into the hands of Americans was alarming to me and my fellow scientists.”
He said he succeeded in limiting the use of the malaria drug to hospitalized patients.
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors against prescribing the drug except in hospitals and research studies. In an alert, regulators flagged reports of sometimes fatal heart side effects among coronavirus patients taking hydroxychloroquine or the related drug chloroquine.