Coronavirus: Top US health official Rick Bright says he was ousted for opposing Trump-touted drug
- Expert helping lead efforts to find vaccine was pushed out as director of Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and moved to smaller role
- Bright had limited use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as it ‘clearly lacked scientific merit’
A top US health official who was helping lead efforts to find a coronavirus vaccine said he was removed from his post because he insisted on limiting the use of a drug President Donald Trump has pushed as a Covid-19 treatment despite little clinical evidence it works.
Rick Bright was abruptly pushed out of his position as the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority on Tuesday and given a smaller role at the National Institutes of Health. BARDA is helping pharmaceutical companies develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
The drugs Trump has touted, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, “clearly lack scientific merit”, Bright said in a statement through his lawyers on Wednesday.
“While I am prepared to look at all options and to think ‘outside the box’ for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public,” Bright said.
“I insisted that these drugs be provided only to hospitalised patients with confirmed Covid-19 while under the supervision of a physician. These drugs have potentially serious risks associated with them, including increased mortality observed in some recent studies in patients with Covid-19.”
Bright’s former agency received an emergency authorisation last month from the Food and Drug Administration to use hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in the national stockpile and dole the drugs out for hospitalised Covid-19 patients. BARDA oversees the stockpile.