Former BARDA Chief Rick Bright Resigns From NIH

Rick Bright, the former director of NIH’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), has resigned from the institute, alleging that its leadership failed to assign him meaningful work and ignored his recommendations because of politics.

Bright’s lawyers, who announced his decision to leave the NIH, claimed the pandemic expert was forced to resign “because he can no longer sit idly by and work for an administration that ignores scientific expertise, overrules public health guidance and disrespects career scientists.”

“Since he joined NIH in May, Bright has repeatedly requested the opportunity to contribute to the federal government’s vaccine development efforts, his area of expertise. NIH leadership, however, continues to reject his efforts to contribute further and Bright has now been idle for a month,” his attorneys said.

Back in May, the former BARDA head filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that he was terminated from his leadership role at the vaccine development office and reassigned to a COVID-19 diagnostics initiative at the NIH because he was outspoken in his criticism of the administration’s pandemic response. He claimed that the administration ignored his warnings about chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, the quality of Indian and Pakistani drugs being donated to the national stockpile and medical product shortages (DID, May 6).

That whistleblower complaint has been updated to allege that Bright’s recommendations to improve the administration’s COVID-19 testing approach were ignored by NIH Director Francis Collins due to political considerations.

"We can confirm that Dr. Bright has resigned, effective today, [but] NIH does not discuss personnel issues beyond confirming employment, " an NIH spokesperson said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. — James Miessler