Agency Says Vaccine Official's Ouster May Have Been Retaliation: Report

“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 his statement. “I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way.”

One of Bright’s concerns about hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, another drug pushed by Trump, was that they are manufactured in factories in India and Pakistan that had not been inspected by the FDA, he said in his whistleblower statement. He tried to express his concerns to government officials, but felt that they “refused to listen or take appropriate action to accurately inform the public.”

Bright finally turned to the media himself after concluding “that he had a moral obligation to the American public, including those vulnerable as a result of illness from COVID-19, to protect it from drugs which he believed constituted a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety,” according to his whistleblower complaint.

Bright earned his PhD from Emory University and has worked in infectious disease research and treatment development for more than 25 years. Until April, he had been serving in his position at the HHS since 2010.

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