RFK Jr fires top NIH scientist weeks after she files whistleblower complaint

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

RFK Jr fires top NIH scientist weeks after she files whistleblower complaint

Jeanne Marrazzo’s complaint reportedly involved the Trump administration’s hostility toward vaccines

Ed Pilkington
Fri 3 Oct 2025 15.25 BST
Last modified on Fri 3 Oct 2025 15.27 BST

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has fired a top scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) just three weeks after she had filed a whistleblower complaint against the Trump administration relating to its hostility towards vaccines, according to a report.

Jeanne Marrazzo has been removed from her NIH job, the New York Times reported. She had already been demoted in March from her senior position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Last month, Marrazzo filed a whistleblower complaint saying that her removal from the top position had been an act of retribution after she had protested about moves taken by the Trump administration to undermine vaccine research.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/03/rfk-jr-jeanne-marrazzo-nih-fired

[sop]

1. Apparently, the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (and 2012) is dead law.

The Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA) covers federal employees for disclosing information they reasonably believe is evidence of: A specific and substantial danger to public health or safety.

[Wednesdays]

2. A law is only as good as its enforcement

So now that the courts are stuffed with MAGAts, then yeah, it's a dead law.

[SeattleVet]

4. Along with Posse Comitatus, the Hatch act, etc...

Without any type of meaningful enforcement this country is totally screwed.

[Ray Bruns]

3. Let the lawsuits begin!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. MaddowBlog-RFK Jr. adds to Team Trump's pattern of punishing whistleblowers

In the current administration, whistleblowers keep losing their jobs after speaking up. Take the NIH’s Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, for example.

It's almost as if they don't give a shit about the American people...

RFK Jr. adds to Team Trump’s pattern of punishing whistleblowers
www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

#RFKDidThis #TrumpDidThis #RepublicansDidThis #GOPKakistocracy #AmericanFascistParty #Project2025 #NoRepublicansEverAgain #USPol

— Democracy Matters! (@democracymatters.bsky.social) 2025-10-03T19:09:50.217Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/rfk-jr-adds-team-trumps-pattern-punishing-whistleblowers-rcna235446

Earlier this year, Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, discovered that Donald Trump’s appointees were repeatedly questioning the role of vaccines in protecting health. When she raised concerns, Marrazzo was demoted.

That, however, was not the end of the dispute. The infectious diseases specialist filed a whistleblower complaint, and as The New York Times reported in a new piece, that appears to have led to her ouster. From the article:

Three weeks after a leading scientist at the National Institutes of Health filed a whistle-blower complaint against the Trump administration, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy fired her, according to her lawyer and a copy of the termination letter. ... Dr. Marrazzo said in her complaint last month that the N.I.H. had placed her on administrative leave after she objected to Trump administration actions that she said had endangered research subjects, defied court orders and undermined vaccine research.

In theory, Marrazzo might have been able to turn to the federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers, but Donald Trump fired its director and gutted the office......

In theory, there’s nothing especially partisan or ideological about whistleblowers. Sometimes those who work in federal agencies will see some kind of wrongdoing — corruption, mismanagement, inefficiencies, fraud and misuse of resources, etc. — and it’s in everyone’s interest to have a system in which such witnesses are able to come forward, confident in the knowledge that they’ll be heard and respected without being punished.

In practice, that system appears to be unraveling with unnerving speed, sending a signal to federal officials: Those who speak up should expect to be punished.