Physician Who Blew Whistle on Administration Response to COVID Honored

Rick A. Bright, M.D., an immunologist and former official in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), received the 2020 Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize for publicizing what Bright said was the Trump administration’s suppression of truth about the COVID-19 virus and politicization of the administration’s response to the pandemic.

“In January we saw a deadly virus spreading from person to person in several countries before it became widespread in the U.S.,” Bright said in an acceptance speech at the virtual Ridenhour Awards last month. “We all knew the risk of the pending global crisis; the president knew. Yet the administration failed to prioritize actions critical to get in front of the outbreak. Americans were not told the truth about the virus. Instead the president and the White House [Coronoavirus] Task Force said the risk was low and the virus would just disappear.”

The Ridenhour Awards—sponsored by Type Media Center, the Fertel Foundation, and the Stewart R. Mott Foundation—were founded in 2003 in memory of Ron Ridenhour, the Vietnam War veteran who exposed the massacre at My Lai to Congress. The awards honor people “who persevere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice, or illuminate a more just vision of society.”

Last year child psychiatrist and APA member Pamela McPherson, M.D., received a Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize for exposing the administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S. southern border (see Psychiatric News).

In 2018 Bright was appointed by then-President Barack Obama to be director of the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority (BARDA), where he had worked since joining HHS in 2010.

In April, in the midst of the pandemic, Bright was reassigned to work at the National Institutes of Health. Bright said that the move was a demotion in retaliation for his opposition to certain Trump administration policies—especially the attempt by the administration to speed approval of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.

“I found myself in the crosshairs between science and politics,” Bright said. “In March, the White House ordered me to drop everything to make chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine available to all Americans. There was no evidence that either drug was effective in treating people with COVID-19. Even worse, the drugs in question came from factories in Pakistan and India that lacked FDA approval.

“Nevertheless, the FDA was instructed to make an exception, and I was given 48 hours to enable widespread access. The timeline was driven to align with the president’s plan to promote these unproven drugs at a news conference.”

Bright said his team sought to evade the directive for widespread access and instead worked with the FDA on an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to restrict the use of drugs to hospitalized patients under close supervision. Later, the FDA withdrew the EUA, and studies have since shown that hydroxychloroquine has no significant benefit for COVID-19.

In May, Bright filed a whistleblower complaint against HHS. The HHS Office of Special Counsel, which investigates such complaints, ruled that the administration had violated the Whistleblower Protection Act and called on the administration to reappoint Bright to his position at BARDA. The rule was not binding on HHS, and he was never reappointed. President Trump dismissed Bright as a “disgruntled employee” in a tweet.

In testimony before the House Health Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Bright warned that “the darkest winter in human history” could come in 2020 if steps were not taken to control the pandemic. Last month, Bright resigned from HHS.

“Of all the tools to fight this pandemic, the one most sorely missing has been the truth,” Bright said at the Ridenhour ceremony. “Truth is the only way to build trust and instill calm in a crisis.” He concluded his remarks saying, “This pandemic is not over, and the worst is yet to come.” ■

A video of the Ridenhour Prizes is posted here.