Dr. Rick Bright’s complaint says Health and Human Services leadership was slow to react and pushed contracts “based on political connections.”
A top Health and Human Services official who says he was shoved out of a key coronavirus response job for pushing back on “efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections” filed a whistleblower complaint Tuesday charging “an abuse of authority or gross mismanagement” at the agency.
In his complaint, Dr. Rick Bright, who until last month was the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response and director of BARDA, described a chaotic response to the virus at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The chaos was fueled largely by “pressure from HHS leadership to ignore scientific merit and expert recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism,” the complaint says.
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