Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has dismissed Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, a top National Institutes of Health official and whistleblower who exposed internal conflicts over vaccine research during the Trump administration.
Dr. Marrazzo, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), received a termination letter on Wednesday. The letter, reviewed by CBS News, cited no specific cause for the dismissal beyond the secretary’s constitutional authority.
The firing comes after Marrazzo, who succeeded Dr. Anthony Fauci in August 2023, was placed on indefinite leave in March. In September, she filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel alleging illegal retaliation. In a recent interview, she said she had been silenced for pushing back against officials who questioned the importance of childhood flu vaccines and canceled clinical trials.
“My termination, unfortunately, shows that the leaders of HHS and the National Institutes of Health do not share my commitment to scientific integrity and public health,” Marrazzo said in a statement. Her attorney called the firing further “retaliation for her protected whistleblower activity.”
Marrazzo’s complaint centers on Dr. Matthew Memoli, who served as acting NIH director before becoming the health agency’s second-in-command. She alleged that Memoli made statements echoing Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism, arguing that “vaccines are unnecessary if populations are healthy” and that the NIH “should not focus on vaccines.”
An HHS spokesperson defended Memoli, stating he “remains fully aligned with this administration’s vaccine priorities and consistently champions gold-standard evidence-based science.”
Marrazzo’s path to recourse through the Office of Special Counsel, the agency that handles whistleblower cases, is uncertain. President Trump fired the head of the independent agency in February, installing top trade official Jamieson Greer as its acting leader. The office has since launched an ethics probe into Jack Smith, the former special counsel who indicted Trump.
This dismissal is the latest of Kennedy’s moves impacting federal vaccine policy. In June, he removed all 17 members of the advisory committee that makes vaccine recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control, handpicking their replacements. The reconstituted panel recently endorsed a change in guidelines for the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine, recommending children under four receive it in two separate shots.
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