Rick Bright, a federal vaccine scientist who was recently removed from his office by the Trump Administration, is ready to file a whistleblower complaint.
His lawyers claimed that his ousting came after he refused to endorse unproven COVID-19 drug, chloroquine, touted by President Donald Trump.
Chloroquine is a drug used for malaria treatment. When Trump’s own health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked if the drug could ever be used to treat COVID 19, he said that “the answer is no.”
Bright was removed this week as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a federal office under the Health and Human Services Department.
“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.
Hours after Bright made his statement, HHS denied his claim.
“It was Dr. Bright who requested an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for donations of chloroquine that Bayer and Sandoz recently made to the Strategic National Stockpile for use on COVID-19 patients,” HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said.
In response, Bright’s lawyers claimed that “the administration is now making demonstrably false statements about Dr. Bright.”
“In our filing, we will make clear that Dr. Bright was sidelined for one reason only — because he resisted efforts to provide unfettered access to potentially dangerous drugs, including chloroquine, a drug promoted by the Administration as a panacea, but which is untested and possibly deadly when used improperly,” Bright’s lawyers said.
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