Christine Grady, a senior bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and wife of Dr. Anthony Fauci, lost her job on Wednesday at the hands of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Federal officials familiar with the latest round of layoffs said Grady’s termination was partly due to her failure to investigate the theory that a lab leak in Wuhan may have triggered the COVID-19 pandemic. An HHS spokesman stated that the layoffs were part of a broader restructuring at the NIH, shifting its focus away from pandemic preparedness and toward more immediate concerns. Grady, whose research centers on the likelihood of future pandemics, was not the only bioethicist affected. Others were offered positions in locations such as Alaska, Montana, and Minnesota, far from their homes. It remains unclear whether a similar offer was extended to Grady.
Although Grady’s work received praise from her colleagues, they recognized that her marriage to Fauci—a target of President Donald Trump—affected her ability to stay at the agency. One source told the Daily Caller Grady is “a good person with a major conflict of interest.”
“One of the problems when the coverup was going on of the Wuhan lab leak, that whole fiasco, was that they were not listening to anyone giving ethics advice,” the official said. “If they had had someone at the table with knowledge of this, they would have said: ‘Hey do you want to play it this way, or be more transparent?’ Someone could have raised the question.” The official continued: That’s something Christine Grady could have, or should have, done. She wasn’t able to do it because she was Fauci’s wife.”
“Maybe they had discussions in private about what was going on,” the official said. “She was placed in a conflicted role because of that.” The couple has a net worth exceeding $11 million, which increased by over $7 million since the pandemic began, according to the outlet. Fauci secured a $5 million publishing deal for his memoir after retiring from government service.
