The NPR Politics Podcast - Ousted Scientist Warns Government Response Risks American Lives

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Career government scientist Rick Bright testified that he was pushed out as the head of a government medical research agency after pushing back against higher-ups over an under-researched coronavirus treatment touted by the president. Bright says raised alarms about critical supply shortages early on in the pandemic. This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, science correspondent Allison Aubrey. Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio stationLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Iris in Missoula, Montana. We are currently howling with our city in support of our essential workers. This podcast was recorded at 1.54 p.m. on Thursday, May 14th. The news has most likely changed by the time that you hear this, but Missoula will still be howling to thank those on the front lines. I don't know how you judge a howl, but I actually thought they were real animals, so I think those are pretty good howls. Well, hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress.

And we're joined again by one of our recurring guests from NPR Science Desk, Alison Aubrey. Alison, thanks again for coming on the show. Hey there, guys. Happy to be here. The Subcommittee on Health will now come to order. So today, a career government scientist by the name of Rick Bright testified before members of the House of Representatives and offered this pretty stark warning. Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history. First and foremost, we need to be truthful with the American people. Americans deserve the truth. The truth must be based on science. We have the world's greatest scientist. Let us lead. Let us speak without fear of retribution. Allison, I want to begin with you. Can you just tell us who Rick Bright is and what brought him to the Hill today?

Sure. Rick Bright is a Ph.D. scientist. He was removed from his job as the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, known as BARDA. It's part of the federal government. And he filed a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel. He contends that he was removed from his post by top officials at the Department of Health and Human Services because of his urgings, basically, that funds allocated by Congress to tackle COVID-19 should be invested in what he called scientifically vetted solutions and not in drugs, vaccines, and other things that lack scientific merit. In particular, what became clear

in his testimony today, he says the straw that broke the camel's back was his pushback on expanded use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to treat patients during this pandemic. This was a drug touted by President Trump. Now, his refusal to promote the anti-malaria drug is why he says he was removed from his job. But in his testimony today, he also painted a much broader picture of what he says was inaction in the early days of the pandemic and suggests without necessarily naming the president directly in the course of his testimony, but essentially that the Trump administration was ill-prepared for this and continues to not prepare adequately for the pandemic. And that quite frankly, things could get much, much worse if there isn't a more clear nationally directed strategy versus the state by state strategy

that we've seen so far. So I was going to move on, but it sounds like someone's doing dishes or I hear some plates moving around. That might be my husband. Hold on. I mean, God bless him for doing the dishes, but. Not now. All right. Well, Sue takes care of that.

Allison, I wanted to ask you, you know, how has the Trump administration been responding to Bright? My understanding is, you know, President Trump has essentially tried to discount him. But I'll tell you what, to me, I watched this guy for a little while this morning. To me, he's nothing more than a really disgruntled, unhappy person. You know, I'd say there's definitely an effort to question his credibility. HHS leadership released a press release saying Rick Bright was transferred from his role at BARDA to lead a bold new billion-dollar testing program at NIH that is going to be

critical to saving lives and reopening America, suggesting this is a very important job that he was supposed to be in. They say Mr. Bright has not yet shown up for work but continues to collect his $285,000 salary while using taxpayer-funded medical leave to work what they are calling this partisan attack. So basically, they are not happy about it. Officials at HHS say Bright's whistleblower complaint is filled with one-sided arguments and misinformation. I'm back. I'm back. Sorry. the president somehow was doing something wrong when the White House was suggesting that the anti-malaria drug could be used to treat patients. I mean, the White House at the beginning never really said that the scientific data was there, but they conceded that there was anecdotal data that some patients could benefit it when all other treatments had not been utilized. And I think what

they were trying to defend the president is saying the president was just doing everything he could to help sick people. And Bright has just had a different opinion. And he took issue with the fact that the White House didn't agree with him. But to suggest that it was somehow nefarious or wrong or ill-informed by the president, they took great issue with. When did you sour, if you will, on the use of hydroxychloroquine? I believe that we've seen many drugs that could have benefit, and some of these are really interesting things we'd never heard of, some we have. I understand that, but my question was, when did you sour on it?

When it was determined that this drug should be made available to Americans outside the context of a close physician. But on the other side, you know, he is a credible witness. He is a lifelong government employee. He's a doctor. He has the scientific credentials. And that is what Democrats are going back to time and time again. And I think that the sort of bigger picture he is painting here is the one that Democrats really wanted to focus on. And quite frankly, the picture he's painting is one of an administration that has poorly handled this pandemic from the beginning and continues to handle it poorly. And that is something that I think Democrats are using in this moment to try to build the case that the government needs to take a more aggressive role. The federal government needs to take a more aggressive role in managing this crisis. Our window of opportunity is closing. If we fail to improve our response now based on science, I fear the pandemic will get worse and be prolonged.

I think he's painting a picture of missed opportunities. He's looking back and he's saying, look, in January and February and March, I was urging the higher ups, please pay attention to the shortages of masks and swabs coming. He was getting signals from many different sources, he said, that they needed to stockpile more N95 masks. He says nobody was listening to him and that his urgings were sort of falling on deaf ears. At one point, he talked about bringing this up in a meeting. And here's what he heard back from folks higher up at HHS. They informed me that they did not believe there was a critical urgency to procure masks. They conducted some surveys, talked to a few hospitals

and some companies, and they didn't yet see a critical shortage. And I indicated that we know there will be a critical shortage of these supplies. We need to do something to ramp up production. They indicated if we notice there is a shortage that we will simply change the CDC guidelines to better inform people who should not be wearing those masks so that would save those masks for our healthcare workers. My response was, I cannot believe you can sit and say that with a straight face. And at the White House today, the President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar pushed back against Bright. The president has accused him of being just a disgruntled employee. And Azar said that, you know, the points that Bright raised in

his complaint, everything he said, quote, everything he's complaining about was achieved, that the allegations just don't hold up and that they, other past HHS officials have noted that there had been prior complaints about Bright's personality and pushback in the office. And so trying to push back on this notion that everything he is saying shouldn't be taken without a grain of salt, but also kind of a problem when the White House isn't sending anybody up to Capitol Hill to defend them. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll have more on this hearing when we get back. This message comes from NPR sponsor StoryPoint Wines, maker of StoryPoint, a bold new wine brand with a rich layered taste profile. Enjoy StoryPoint wine while you connect with those you love, either at home or at a virtual happy hour.

Raise a glass and share a story. StoryPoint believes that the stories we share can bring joy even in trying times. Visit storypointvineyards.com slash politics to purchase. Shipping is included in your online order, so consider shipping a bottle to a friend, too. Face masks have become the new normal as we continue to grapple with the ongoing pandemic. But when did we start wearing masks for our health and safety? This week on ThruLine, the origins of the N95 mask and how it became the life-saving tool it is today. ThruLine from NPR, the podcast where we go back in time to understand the present. And we're back. And I want to delve

into some of the specifics that Bright talked about. Let's start with the shortages of masks and swabs. One thing that he said that that that stuck in my ear is that he was talking about the availability of masks and criticized that because the masks had come from foreign countries and they hadn't gone through proper vetting processes, he said that frontline workers in this country, healthcare workers, could be using those N95 masks, but that they could only be about 30% effective. Essentially, that these masks aren't as effective as we believe they are. And I just hadn't really heard that, and it really stuck my ear as something that could be one of these potential growing crises that he talked about.

Congressman, I'll never forget the emails I received from Mike Bowen indicating that our mask supply or N95 respirator supply was completely decimated. And he said, we're in deep s**t. The world is. And we need to act. And I pushed that forward to the highest levels I could in HHS and got no response. And really, I think what he was pointing out there is that due to delays in procuring 95 masks, we've had to import a lot of them.

Now, it's not clear the extent to which these masks may be subpar. But I will say that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, they did recently test masks that had been imported to the U.S. and found that more than half of them did fail to block out 95% of particles, which, of course, is what an N95 mask is supposed to do. Now, this is a limited analysis. They said they weren't able to test the whole batch. But it is an indicator that perhaps, you know, you just don't have the quality control when you are importing these masks. You know, Alison, the other thing I want to ask you about was his assessment of having a vaccine. And I ask that in part because I feel like a lot of us are sitting here thinking that, OK,

you know, the situation with COVID may not be good, but eventually there'll be a vaccine. And there's a sense from President Trump that that vaccine is going to be coming shortly. Yeah. I mean, you could see on his face, when he was asked about that question, he was point blank asked, when will we have a vaccine? And he said, that is a really difficult question to answer. He pointed out that sometimes it can take 10 years to make a vaccine, that making vaccines, it is very difficult, you have to have safety, you have to have efficacy. I mean, think about vaccines like this. When you give a drug to a person who is already in really bad shape, right, and might be

dying, well, giving that person that drug, you do the risk-benefit calculation, and you think, okay, it might help, can't hurt. The person's already in bad shape. It's a very different situation when you're going to give a vaccine to 300 million people, right? The safety studies that have to be done, those take time. And so he was saying, you know, this 12 to 18 month timeline that's been floating about, it sort of makes people optimistic. But he said, hmm, if everything goes perfectly, then we might have some safety, some efficacy data in 12 to 18 months, then it's a completely different process to ramp up production to get to 300 million doses, right? There's no one company that's going to be able to produce 300 million vaccines. I mean,

this is going to take a national effort. And he was saying, look, we don't have a coordination plan for that either. All right. So before we go, we actually have some unrelated breaking news. Senator Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, has decided to temporarily step aside from his role as chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Sue, I want you to just catch us up to speed on this decision. I mean, he is currently under federal investigation. So what should we know about this? Well, last night, Senator Burr was executed a search warrant at his private home and the FBI seized his cell phone.

This was first reported by the Los Angeles Times and NPR has confirmed it. So when the news broke that this happened, it's certainly a confirmation that the senator is under criminal investigation. And traditionally, it's not required, but traditionally on Capitol Hill, when lawmakers are the subject of criminal or ethical investigations, they tend to relinquish their leadership or committee leadership posts. So it's not unusual that he is stepping aside. It's certainly unusual that the Senate Intelligence Chairman is under a criminal investigation for potential insider trading. But also important to remember that Burr is term limited in that job. He had to give it up at the end of this year. So if this investigation rolls on for months, as many federal investigations tend to do, he could effectively be done as the Senate intelligence chairman.

So Sue, have we heard from Burr himself in terms of how he's been responding to this situation? Reporters caught up to him on Capitol Hill today. He basically told them that he's cooperating with the investigation and he agreed to step aside because he didn't want the investigation to become a distraction. This is a distraction to the hard work of the committee and the members. And I think the security of the country is too important to have a distraction. All right. Well, we are going to leave it there for today. Allison, thanks for coming on the pod as always.

Sure. It's great to be here. That's Allison Aubrey from NPR Science Desk. And we will be back tomorrow with our weekly roundup. Until then, you can head to npr.org slash politics newsletter to sign up for a roundup of our best online analysis. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.