CDC and FDA officials ‘altered’ Covid guidance and even ‘suppressed’ findings related to the virus due to political pressure, a bombshell report suggests.
Investigators from the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO) spoke to more than a dozen directors and managers who worked at the agencies behind the country’s pandemic guidance.
They unearthed allegations of ‘political interference’ in scientific reports, raising fears that research was tampered with.
In its 37-page report, the GAO warned that neither agency had a system in place for reporting allegations of political interference. It also said they had failed to train staff how to spot and report this.
Whistleblowers said they did not speak up at the time for fear of retaliation, because they were unsure how to report the issues or believed leaders were already aware.
This is just the latest in a growing patchwork of reports suggesting politicians influenced ‘scientific’ papers during the pandemic for their own ends.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration’s top medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci declared the U.S. is now ‘out of the pandemic phase’ of Covid, citing low cases and hospitalizations.
But health experts were quick to question the claim — buried at the end of an interview with PBS’ NewsHour — suggesting he may have bungled his words and should only have said the nation was in a phase of ‘low hospitalizations’.
In the early phase the White House was accused of waging a war on science, with then-president Donald Trump repeatedly pushing for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports to be amended to support his views, as shown in emails made public by congressional investigators last April.
The CDC is facing allegations that it altered and suppressed Covid guidance that was meant to save lives. (Stock image of its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia)
The FDA is facing the same accusations, following its approval of a blood plasma treatment early in the pandemic. Hospitals are no longer offering blood plasma to most patients because it provided ‘little benefit’. (Stock image of their headquarters in White Oak, Maryland)
The Biden administration’s top medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has declared the United States is now ‘out of the pandemic phase’ of Covid-19 , as cases and hospitalizations associated with the disease remain low
‘A few respondents from CDC and [Food and Drug Administration] FDA stated they felt that the potential political interference they observed resulted in the alteration or suppression of scientific findings,’ GAO investigators wrote in the report.
‘Some of these respondents believed that this potential political interference may have resulted in the politically motivated alteration of public health guidance or delayed publication of Covid-related scientific findings.’
The GAO report published last week looked into the two agencies, alongside the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — America’s top research institution— and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) — in charge of natural disaster response.
All are part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which in February was branded as at ‘high risk’ for fraud, mismanagement and abuse by the GAO in a separate report.