A former top government vaccine official has filed a whistleblower complaint against the Trump administration claiming that he was demoted for pushing for more evidence regarding hydroxychloroquine, the drug touted by President Trump as a possible remedy for the coronavirus.
Dr. Rick Bright, the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, filed the complaint with the Office of Special Counsel Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. Last month, Bright said he was removed from his job as director of BARDA, the agency tasked with finding a coronavirus vaccine, because of his “insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines, and other technologies that lack scientific merit.”
The Trump administration, Bright said, has pushed hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, without finding significant evidence that it works to treat COVID-19. Trump has played up the drug’s promise for weeks, telling people they have nothing to lose by taking it.
Bright, who now holds another position at the National Institutes of Health, said the Trump administration also disregarded his early warnings about the growing spread of the coronavirus. He said that Health and Human Services leadership “appeared intent on downplaying this catastrophic event” and “demanded that New York and New Jersey be ‘flooded’ with these drugs, which were imported from factories in Pakistan and India that had not been inspected by the FDA.”
The Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved any coronavirus treatments, although it authorized the drug remdesivir for emergency use after clinical trials showed it decreased recovery time for patients with COVID-19.
