The head of the government office developing a coronavirus vaccine is accusing the Trump administration of demoting him as political retaliation for his skepticism about a COVID-19 treatment President Trump often pushed.
Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, said he will file a whistleblower complaint with the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services.
“I believe this transfer was in response to my 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,” Mr. Bright said in a statement issued Wednesday and posted by CNN.
Mr. Bright didn’t specify the demotion in his letter beyond saying it was “a more limited and less impactful position at the National Institutes of Health.”
But he was specific about “clashes with political leadership” at HHS over the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, an existing malaria drug that seemed to have some early successes, which Mr. Trump touted.
“Contrary to misguided directives,” Mr. Bright said, he “limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the Administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit.”
His note repeatedly accused the Trump administration of corruption.
He said he “resisted efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections” and “sidelining me in the middle of this pandemic [is] placing politics and cronyism ahead of science.”
His demotion came up at Mr. Trump’s daily coronavirus task-force press conference, but the president said he doesn’t know who Mr. Bright is.
“I never heard of him,” Mr. Trump said.
• Tom Howell Jr. contributed to this report.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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