Ousted NIH officers file whistleblower complaints, allege retaliation
September 05, 2025
4 min learn
Key takeaways:
- Two prime officers on the NIH filed whistleblower complaints alleging they have been eliminated as retaliation for defending science.
- They’re searching for reinstatement, lawyer’s charges and damages.
Two former NIH officers alleged in whistleblower complaints filed this week that they have been faraway from their positions in retaliation for defending analysis grants and vaccines and resisting efforts to prioritize politics over science.
The complaints have been filed with the U.S. Workplace of Particular Counsel by Jeanne M. Marrazzo, MD, MPH, and Kathleen M. Neuzil, MD, MPH, who have been positioned on administrative go away from prime positions on the NIH in April.
Two prime NIH officers who have been faraway from their jobs by HHS earlier his 12 months have filed whistleblower complaints that allege they have been focused for pushing again in opposition to what they noticed as political meddling in science. Picture: Adobe Inventory/Tada Photographs
Their complaints describe the setting inside NIH within the wake of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s affirmation as HHS secretary in February as hostile towards evidence-based science, together with vaccines.
The complaints present particulars of two conferences attended by performing NIH director Matthew J. Memoli, MD, MS, together with one on the White Home, by which Memoli is described as “echoing [Kennedy’s] deal with power illness over infectious ailments,” on the expense of vaccines. Memoli is presently the principal deputy director underneath NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD.
Of their complaints, Marrazzo and Neuzil additionally allege that the administration canceled grants and scientific trials “for political causes.”
The New York Occasions was first to report on the complaints. HHS didn’t reply to requests for touch upon Friday, however an HHS spokesman instructed the Occasions that Memoli “stays absolutely aligned with this administration’s vaccine priorities and persistently champions gold-standard, evidence-based science.”
Marrazzo didn’t reply to a direct request for remark. The agency representing Marrazzo and Neuzil — Katz Banks Kumin — directed Healio to ready statements printed on-line and didn’t reply to requests to make the physicians accessible for interviews.
In one of many statements, the agency mentioned the physicians “got here ahead to teach the general public concerning the critical public well being risks this nation and certainly the world faces on account of the politically motivated actions of Secretary Kennedy and others appointed to high-level posts at HHS and NIH.”
Marrazzo took over for Anthony S. Fauci, MD, as director of the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Ailments in 2023. She has been on administrative go away since April 1, a part of the mass layoff of HHS staffers.
When she was faraway from her place, Marrazzo was instructed she can be reassigned to the Indian Well being Service to fill that company’s “untenable emptiness price,” however was by no means really reassigned, based on her grievance. Jeffery Ok. Taubenberger, MD, PhD, has been the performing NIAID director since April.
Neuzil had led the NIH’s Fogarty Worldwide Middle (FIC) since March 2024 and was the company’s affiliate director for worldwide analysis earlier than she was positioned on administrative go away on April 12. She involuntarily resigned from federal service final week.
Each Marrazzo and Neuzil are former members of the Healio | Infectious Illness Information Editorial Board.
There was appreciable turmoil within the nation’s public well being companies since Kennedy took over, culminating within the firing of Susan Monarez, PhD, as director of the CDC final week lower than a month after she was confirmed and weeks after a gunman mentioned to be distrustful of COVID-19 vaccines opened hearth on the company’s headquarters in Atlanta. In an op-ed printed in The Wall Road Journal this week, Monarez mentioned she was fired as a result of she “put kids above politics, proof above ideology and information above concern.” She mentioned she had been pressured by Kennedy to fireplace prime CDC officers and to preapprove suggestions from the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, lately changed by Kennedy, that haven’t but been made.
Kennedy confronted questions on his administration of HHS in a generally heated Senate listening to on Thursday, throughout which he acknowledged the reality of the studies that he had requested Monarez to fireplace senior CDC officers (who later resigned) however mentioned Monarez was mendacity that he requested her to “rubber stamp” vaccine suggestions.
In line with Marrazzo’s grievance, throughout a repeatedly scheduled assembly of NIH senior management on Feb. 13, Memoli instructed attendees that the company can be “doing issues in a different way,” together with scrutinizing overseas support distributed by NIH and prioritizing President Trump’s government orders in opposition to range, fairness and inclusion.
At one other management assembly days later, after Marrazzo gave a presentation on the U.S. avian influenza outbreak that included a slide about pediatric deaths attributed to seasonal influenza, Memoli remarked that being wholesome was extra necessary to stop critical outcomes from respiratory illness than vaccination, the grievance alleges. In line with the grievance, Memoli “appeared irritated … and didn’t reply” after Neuzil, additionally current on the assembly, responded that most of the pediatric deaths accounted for within the slide occurred amongst kids with wholesome immune methods who have been unvaccinated.
A “near-verbatim” scene unfolded days later throughout a briefing Marrazzo gave on the White Home about NIAID’s pandemic preparedness actions when Memoli “reiterated the administration’s place that vaccines are pointless if populations are wholesome,” based on the grievance.
Marrazzo alleges that she was faraway from her place in a “blatant act of retaliation” for resisting what the grievance calls the Trump administration’s “efforts to prioritize politics over science.” This included elevating issues about what she noticed as “actions that not solely immediately undermined NIH’s objective of furthering medical analysis but additionally constituted a considerable and particular hazard to public well being and security, and wasted funds by abandoning years-long analysis initiatives earlier than they may implement their findings,” based on the grievance. She is searching for reinstatement, lawyer’s charges and damages.
Neuzil’s grievance alleges that “HHS had a robust motive to retaliate in opposition to” her for demanding that HHS present explanations for choices that “contradicted the burden of scientific proof, harmed public well being, undermined NIH and FIC’s mission, and have been based mostly on HHS’s errors of reality.”
“Administration officers repeatedly both ignored or curtly dismissed Dr. Neuzil’s issues, together with by telling her that the directives she opposed” — together with one to shutter a world well being fairness students program regardless of it not having a DEI part — “have been ‘coming from the White Home,’” the compliant says. “Eradicating Dr. Neuzil from her place would subsequently enable the company to implement its political agenda with much less opposition, and with out having to clarify its actions in response to thorough and evidence-based scientific objections.”
Neuzil can be searching for reinstatement, lawyer’s charges and damages, based on the grievance.
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