A Trump Official Tried to Fast-Track Funding for His Friend’s Unproven COVID-19 “Treatment,” Whistleblower Says

An example of why republicans want to block the ability of people to bring lawsuits related to Covid-19.

I suggest reading the whole article at the following link.

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-trump-official-tried-to-fast-track-funding-for-his-friends-unproven-covid-19-treatment-whistleblower-says


by Lisa Song May 14, 6 a.m. EDT


Whistleblowing virologist Rick Bright says that his Trump-appointed boss [Robert Kadlec] tried to fast-track funding for a friend’s coronavirus treatment, and that he was reassigned for insisting that funding be reserved for “safe and scientifically vetted solutions.”

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Bright said Kadlec looked favorably on the proposal from the beginning, but Bright urged caution, as Painter had no data on the drug’s effects in humans. For instance, Bright said he’d noted during the November meeting that other compounds similar to this drug had toxic effects, as the lab animals treated with those chemicals gave birth to offspring that were “born without teeth and without parts of their skulls.”

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A copy of Bright’s scheduled testimony, released Wednesday, did not mention Painter specifically but spoke generally of how officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees BARDA, dismissed his early warnings to act quickly against the virus. His dismissal, he wrote, was a response to his “insistence that the government invest funding ... into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit.”

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far less attention has been paid to his claims from 2017-19, during which Bright described at least four instances when Kadlec pressured his staff to judge potential grantees — such as Painter — based more on political connections than scientific merit.

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