RFK Jr fires top NIH scientist weeks after she files whistleblower complaint

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has fired a top scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) just three weeks after she had filed a whistleblower complaint against the Trump administration relating to its hostility towards vaccines, according to a report.

Jeanne Marrazzo has been removed from her NIH job, the New York Times reported. She had already been demoted in March from her senior position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Last month, Marrazzo filed a whistleblower complaint saying that her removal from the top position had been an act of retribution after she had protested about moves taken by the Trump administration to undermine vaccine research.

She also alleged in the complaint that Trump officials had been flouting court orders and politicizing decisions over grants.

Kennedy fired Marrazzo in a letter on 26 September which failed to give any explanation for the move. “In my capacity as secretary, I have decided to terminate your appointment as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease,” he wrote, according to the newspaper.

Marrazzo’s dismissal is part of sweeping firings that have been introduced under Kennedy across the federal health operation. The secretary has indicated that he wants to see at least 10,000 jobs eliminated as part of “restructuring” of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

That comes on top of a similar number of positions shed under Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge). That would bring the total number of dismissals to the equivalent of about one in four HHS workers.

Over the past nine months, the Trump administration has slashed budgets, fired thousands of scientists and decimated federal health research. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been cut from research programs seeking a cure and new treatments for cancer.

Long before he became the country’s top health official, Kennedy began spreading doubts about vaccine safety and efficacy in the face of established science. Since joining the administration, he has scrapped $500m in research grants into mRNA vaccines that are credited with saving millions of lives during the Covid-19 pandemic.