CDC chief resigns after 6 months
Financial conflicts of interest had led to frequent recusals
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resigned her position Wednesday after only half a year because of “complex financial interests” that repeatedly forced her to recuse herself from the agency’s activities and kept her from testifying before lawmakers on public health issues.
According to a statement from the Health and Human Services department, Secretary Alex Azar, who was sworn in just two days ago, accepted Brenda Fitzgerald’s resignation because she could not divest from those interests “in a definitive time period.”
Fitzgerald, 71, a physician who served as the Georgia public health commissioner until her appointment to the CDC post in July, said in an interview late last year that she already had divested from many stock holdings. But she and her husband were legally obligated to maintain other investments in cancer detection and health information technology, according to her ethics agreement, requiring Fitzgerald to pledge to avoid government business that might affect those interests.
In Congress, some lawmakers had become increasingly concerned over Fitzgerald’s ability to do her job effectively.
“It is unacceptable that the person responsible for leading our nation’s public health efforts has, for months, been unable to fully engage in the critical work she was appointed to do,” Sen. Patty Murray, Wash., the senior Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees the CDC, said in a statement Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Politico reported that Fitzgerald had purchased shares in a tobacco company shortly after becoming CDC director. An HHS spokesman confirmed “the potentially conflicting” stock purchases. He said they were handled by her financial manager.
Fitzgerald served as a major in the Air Force and ran unsuccessfully for Congress twice in the 1990s.