US Vaccine Expert Says He Was Ousted Over Coronavirus Treatment Dispute

By Staff, Agencies

The head of a US agency in charge of developing a vaccine against the COVID-19 coronavirus said on Wednesday that he was removed from his position after warning against a malaria drug promoted by President Donald Trump.

Rick Bright issued a statement announcing that he was dismissed on Tuesday as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority [BARDA] and reassigned to a position in the National Institutes of Health.

He was removed after "resisting efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public," according to Bright’s statement. 

"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," he said in a statement to US media.

Trump has backed the use the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to help treat COVID-19, despite scientific opinion being deeply divided about the effectiveness of the drug in treating the pandemic disease.

When the president was questioned about Bright's case at a press conference on Tuesday, Trump responded: "I never heard of him. A guy says he was pushed out of a job. Maybe he was maybe, he wasn’t. You’d have to hear the other side."

Bright said he would be calling for an investigation into his removal.

"I will request that the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services investigate the manner in which this Administration has politicized the work of BARDA and has pressured me and other conscientious scientists to fund companies with political connections as well as efforts that lack scientific merit."