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Fitzgerald resigns from CDC over ‘complex’ financial conflicts
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Brenda Fitzgerald, MD, resigned as CDC director because of financial conflicts, including shares in a tobacco company, that HHS said were “limiting her ability” to do her job. She spent less than 7 months in the position.
New HHS secretary Alex Azar II accepted Fitzgerald’s resignation on Jan. 31, a department spokesman said. Anne Schuchat, MD, has been renamed acting director of the CDC. Schuchat, who was the principal deputy director of the agency, also took charge in January 2017 until Fitzgerald was named director in July of that same year.
An OB/GYN, Fitzgerald led the Georgia Department of Public Health for 6 years before being named CDC director last July. She replaced Thomas R. Frieden, MD, MPH, who stepped down after a nearly 8-year tenure when President Donald J. Trump was inaugurated.
Politico reported that Fitzgerald bought shares in a tobacco company 1 month into her new position as head of the CDC, which is tasked with reducing tobacco use among Americans. She was already facing scrutiny for failing to divest from other holdings that pose potential conflicts of interest, according to the Politico report.
“Dr. Fitzgerald owns certain complex financial interests that have imposed a broad recusal limiting her ability to complete all of her duties as the CDC Director,” HHS spokesman Matt Lloyd said in a statement. “Due to the nature of these financial interests, Dr. Fitzgerald could not divest from them in a definitive time period.”
According to Politico, Fitzgerald’s potentially conflicting stock holdings included shares in one of the world’s largest tobacco companies, Japan Tobacco International. The stock was purchased 1 day before Fitzgerald toured the CDC’s Tobacco Laboratory, which investigates exposures to the chemicals in tobacco products. She also owned stock in the pharmaceutical companies Merck and Bayer, purchased after she was named CDC director, and previously purchased holdings in two other companies that precluded her from testifying in front of Congress.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, said she “repeatedly raised concerns about Fitzgerald’s conflicts of interest and broad recusals from work impacting public health issues like cancer and opioids.”
Politico reported that Fitzgerald sold the tobacco shares on Oct. 26 and all her stock holdings over $1,000 by Nov. 21. It was unclear whether she had approved the stock purchases in question, but Fitzgerald told WGCL-TV in Atlanta that her financial investor bought the tobacco stock on her behalf and that it was only in her portfolio for a few months.
“I don’t want to be invested in tobacco. I have been a doctor for 30 years and I have been against tobacco use in any form that entire time and been vocal about it and am vocal now,” she told the CBS affiliate. “As soon as we knew about [the stock], we said, ‘Sell it.’”
Fitzgerald said the real conflict of interest was her investments in health care technology. She told the station that she offered her resignation because divesting from the companies was taking too long and was too distracting.
Frieden, an outspoken critic of tobacco use, said Fitzgerald told him personally that she was unaware of the tobacco shares.
“Dr. Fitzgerald impressed me as someone committed to supporting public health and protecting Americans. I have spoken with Dr. Fitzgerald and believe her when she says that she was unaware that a tobacco company investment had been made, she understands that any affiliation between the tobacco industry and public health is unacceptable, and that when she learned of it, she directed that it be sold,” said Frieden, now the president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a global health program he launched to reduce global deaths from heart attack and stroke. “I wish her well and hope the next director remains focused on using science to protect Americans from threats that arise in this country and anywhere in the world.”
Azar, who was recently sworn in as the Trump administration’s second HHS secretary, accepted Fitzgerald’s resignation after she had advised him “of both the status of the financial interests and the scope of her recusal,” Lloyd said. It marked yet another high-profile exit of a federal official or appointee since Trump has taken office, including the September resignation of Azar’s predecessor, Tom Price, MD, who stepped down as HHS secretary amid scrutiny over his travel expenses.
Fitzgerald’s appointment last year eased some concerns about one of Trump’s more troubling viewpoints from a public health perspective: his public support for certain anti-vaccine views, such as the debunked claim that they cause autism. When she led the Georgia health department, Fitzgerald oversaw a public health program for infectious diseases and immunizations, and she wrote two pro-vaccination newspaper columns for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. – by Gerard Gallagher
Disclosures: Frieden reports no relevant financial disclosures. Lloyd works for HHS.