After Dr. Bright criticized the promotion of untested drugs that Trump and others promoted he was abruptly terminated from his high profile position as head of BARDA. Now he's filed a whistleblower complaint against the Trump administration.
Of particular note was his implication that certain members of the Trump administration are profiting off the promotion of chloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.
Source: ABC
The head of the federal agency charged with overseeing the rapid production of a vaccine to fight the novel coronavirus pandemic said Wednesday he was removed from his post after trying to push back against what he called "cronyism" infecting the federal effort.
Dr. Rick Bright said he was transferred "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."
"I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science -- not politics or cronyism -- has to lead the way," Bright said in a statement that came less than 24 hours after the Department of Health and Human Services circulated an internal memo, reviewed by ABC News, saying he had been promoted to a position in another agency. "Sidelining me in the middle of this pandemic and placing politics and cronyism ahead of science puts lives at risk and stunts national efforts to safely and effectively address this urgent public health crisis."
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Bright had been in charge of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, known as BARDA, which recently received more than $3 billion in federal funds to help ramp up production capacity so that any discovery of a coronavirus vaccine can be quickly manufactured and distributed to hundreds of millions of Americans. His removal from the post stunned lawmakers who had been pushing for a more robust vaccine effort.
