Jeanne Marrazzo, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been fired by US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. According to a statement from lawyer Debra Katz, she was terminated in retaliation to a whistleblower complaint filed last month that alleged the country's health leaders "pursued actions that… constituted a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety."
Marrazzo, an expert on the human microbiome, succeeded Anthony Fauci as director of NIAID in 2023. However, she did not remain in that position long after President Donald Trump began his second term in January.
Soon after Kennedy was confirmed as Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, he announced plans to lay off 10,000 workers across the department, including 1200 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). When the job cuts went into effect on April 1, Marrazzo was also placed on administrative leave.
That demotion, Marrazzo wrote in her September whistleblower complaint, was because she objected to actions from new NIH and HHS leaders that would undermine the institute's goal of furthering medical research, including the cancellation of grants, stoppage of clinical trials, censorship of scientific research, and "wasted funds by abandoning years-long research projects before they could implement their findings."
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