Jeanne Marrazzo, M.D., the former director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was fired from her position three weeks after filing a whistleblower complaint, according to an Oct. 1 statement from Marrazzo’s legal team.
Marrazzo and Kathleen Neuzil, M.D., former director of the NIH’s Fogarty International Center, each filed complaints with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel on Sept. 4 alleging that they faced retaliatory actions for expressing concerns about the potential public health consequences of agency actions, like terminating grant funding and clinical trials and opposing vaccines.
Twenty-two days after filing her complaint, Marrazzo was fired by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., her lawyer said. The former NIAID director had been on administrative leave since Apr. 1, awaiting a supposed reassignment to the Indian Health Service that never came. Neuzil has also been on administrative leave since April.
“The Trump administration terminated Dr. Marrazzo for her advocacy on behalf of critical health research and for her support of the overwhelming body of evidence that shows vaccines are safe and effective,” Marrazzo’s lawyer Debra Katz said in the statement. “With her firing, there is no doubt she was removed from her position as director of NIAID in retaliation for her protected whistleblower activity.”
A spokesperson for the agency rebuffed the claims.
“Her characterization is false,” the HHS spokesperson told Fierce Biotech about Marrazzo. “She was not fired because of that.”
The spokesperson also refuted Neuzil's allegation and declined further comment on both matters.
In her whistleblower complaint (PDF), Marrazzo detailed several instances where she raised concerns about cuts to research funding and anti-vaccine sentiment among the agency’s new leaders.
For example, during meetings on Feb. 20 and Feb. 24, then-acting NIH director Matthew Memoli, M.D., who now serves as principal deputy director, expressed support for the administration’s false view that vaccines are not necessary if a population is already healthy, according to Marrazzo’s filing. When challenged by Marrazzo and Neuzil, he grew annoyed and unresponsive, and in the latter meeting, he “refused to make eye contact” with them.
“He repeated that there is nothing more important than making sure children are healthy to begin with and made clear that NIH should not focus on vaccines,” Marrazzo wrote in her complaint.
“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 the Oct. 1 statement. “Congress must act to protect scientific research from those who would serve political interests first.”
Marrazzo’s firing for allegedly opposing the Trump administration’s anti-vaccine agenda mimics that of Susan Monarez, Ph.D., who served as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for less than a month before Kennedy terminated her. In a Sept. 17 Senate testimony, Monarez said she was fired after refusing to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations from his handpicked Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Alongside Marrazzo, a suite of other NIH leaders who were placed on leave earlier this year have recently been fired, according to an Oct. 2 report from Science. This includes Diana Bianchi, M.D., director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Eliseo Pérez-Stable, M.D., director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities; Shannon Zenk, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Nursing Research; and Tara Schwetz, Ph.D., NIH Deputy Director for program coordination, planning and strategic initiatives.
These firings are the latest in what has been a mass exodus of health leaders under the second Trump administration. Nina Schor, M.D., Ph.D., voluntarily stepped down as head of the NIH’s intramural research program on Sept. 30, while the chief data officer at the NIH’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) resigned in protest of the HHS’ termination of about $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine development in August, among many other departures.