A Trump Official Tried to Fast-Track Funding for His Friend's Unproven COVID-19 "Treatment,"
Whistleblower Says
Last November, Rick Bright, then the director of a federal office that approves funding for medical emergencies, sat in on a meeting between his boss and two men a pharmaceutical and biotech consultant and an Emory University professor seeking millions of dollars for an unproven drug.
Bright wrote in a whistleblower complaint filed last week that he was wary as professor George Painter and consultant John Clerici described the drug as a cure all for influenza, Ebola, and nearly every other virus. The team came back in February with an updated pitch after the coronavirus outbreak, suggesting its antiviral medication could be a treatment for COVID-19.
Painter, a pharmacology professor and CEO of a nonprofit biotech company, had already received $30 million from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense for small-scale clinical trials. But as Bright described in his complaint, Painter sought more money from Brights office, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). Instead of going through Brights formal application process, Painter and Clerici sought funding through a separate, more opaque program created by Brights boss, Robert Kadlec a Trump administration appointee and friend of Painters. Kadlecs program was designed to support products, equipment and technology, Bright said, and lacked the expertise to evaluate drug development.
Bright said Kadlec looked favorably on the proposal from the beginning, but Bright urged caution, as Painter had no data on the drugs effects in humans. For instance, Bright said hed noted during the November meeting that other compounds similar to this drug had toxic effects, as the lab animals treated with those chemicals gave birth to offspring that were born without teeth and without parts of their skulls.
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