Christine Grady, a senior bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health who is married to Dr. Anthony Fauci, was fired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Federal officials who were familiar with the most recent round of layoffs said that Grady was fired in part because she didn’t look into the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic started with a lab leak in Wuhan. A spokesperson for HHS told the media that the cut was part of a larger plan at NIH to focus less on getting ready for pandemics and more on more immediate issues.
Grady wasn’t the only bioethicist who was fired. Her work looks at how likely it is that future pandemics will happen. Others were given jobs in Alaska, Montana, Minnesota, or other remote areas that were hundreds or even thousands of miles from where they lived. It’s not clear if Grady was also given a similar offer.
While Grady’s coworkers praised her work, they also knew that her marriage to Fauci—a political opponent of President Trump—made it harder for her to stay at the agency.