Fired NIAID Director Claims Ouster Was Payback for Whistleblower Report

Jeanne Marrazzo, former director of the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Illnesses, was faraway from her publish after she filed a whistleblower criticism in opposition to senior leaders on the Division of Well being and Human Companies, suggesting that she was fired out of retaliation.

In a ready assertion on Thursday, Marrazzo’s authorized counsel, Debra Katz, mentioned “there isn’t any doubt [Marrazzo] was faraway from her place as Director of NIAID in retaliation for her protected whistleblower exercise.” After months of being on administrative depart, the previous NIAID director was formally terminated Thursday, based on varied media experiences.

“My termination, sadly, reveals that the leaders of HHS and the Nationwide Institutes of Well being don’t share my dedication to scientific integrity and public well being,” Marrazzo mentioned in the identical ready assertion.

Marrazzo got here to steer the NIAID in August 2023, overseeing the company’s work to know, stop and deal with infectious and allergic ailments. Below the management of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nonetheless, she on many events objected to the “censorship of scientific analysis” and senior management’s actions to subordinate “scientific integrity to unscientific and unsupported coverage preferences,” based on Marrazzo’s whistleblower criticism, filed final month.

Specifically, Marrazzo took subject with the HHS’ “hostility in the direction of vaccines” and Kennedy’s “abrupt cancellation of grants and medical trials,” which she claimed was motivated by “political causes.”

For standing as much as the HHS’ new insurance policies, Marrazzo claimed in her whistleblower criticism, she was eliminated as NIAID director and on March 31, 2025, was reassigned to the Indian Well being Service. She was additionally positioned on administrative depart, efficient April 1, 2025, and was instructed to not present up for work. Since then, based on the report, Marrazzo “has been left with no duties or duties,” with out HHS offering her details about her reassignment—nor giving her the chance to tell her employees or filter out her workplace.

“The proof that they had been eliminated for unlawful causes is highly effective and incontrovertible,” Katz mentioned in a Sept. 4 assertion—referring additionally to Dr. Kathleen Neuzil, former director of the Fogarty Worldwide Heart and NIH affiliate director for Worldwide Analysis—alongside a information launch saying the submitting of the whistleblower criticism.

Marrazzo is hardly the one high-profile departure from HHS in current weeks. Arguably essentially the most public ouster has been that of Susan Monarez in August, who was the primary Senate-confirmed director of the CDC for simply 28 days. In a Senate listening to final month, Monarez advised the Well being, Schooling, Labor, and Pensions Committee that Kennedy claimed, with out proof, that CDC staff had been endangering public well being and had been within the business’s pocket.

“He mentioned that CDC staff had been killing youngsters, they usually don’t care,” Monarez mentioned through the listening to, after being questioned by Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH). “He mentioned that CDC staff had been purchased by the pharmaceutical business. He mentioned CDC compelled [people] to put on masks and social distance like a dictatorship.”