Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mission to “Make America Healthy Again” doesn’t seem to be going so well. The new “health czar” continues to preside over the meltdown of America’s most critical health agencies—a development that obviously doesn’t bode well for Americans or their health. Case in point: This weekend, the Food and Drug Administration was thrown into chaos after one of its top drug regulators resigned from his position.
George Tidmarsh was formerly the head of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. However, a lawsuit filed Sunday by Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, has claimed misconduct on Tidmarsh’s part, alleging that he depressed its stock by criticizing one of its drugs on LinkedIn, ABC previously reported. In a LinkedIn post, Tidmarsh apparently criticized voclosporin, a drug from Aurinia designed to treat lupus nephritis, an autoimmune disease. He reportedly wrote that voclosporin had “not been shown to provide a direct clinical benefit for patients” (the lawsuit claims these were “false and defamatory statements”). He later deleted the post, although the lawsuit claims that Aurinia’s stock plummeted 20 percent as a result of the comments, ABC writes.
Additionally, the suit claims Tidmarsh had waged a revenge campaign of sorts against the company’s board chairman, Kevin Tang. “Over the next six years, Dr. Tidmarsh repeatedly threatened that he would exact revenge against Mr. Tang,” the lawsuit says, according to ABC. The New York Times has added that the lawsuit claims Tidmarsh “attempted to extort” Tang, who has been described as a “former business associate” of Tidmarsh. In an interview with the newspaper, Tidmarsh denied the allegations.
Tidmarsh was also previously criticized because, under his leadership, the FDA has moved away from the expert review of new drugs, CBS previously reported. Tidmarsh was quoted as saying that advisory committee meetings for new drugs are “a tremendous amount of work for the company and for the FDA. We want to use that work and our time to focus on the big questions.”
At any rate, with Tidmarsh’s dramatic exit, that leaves the FDA in a state of flux. In text messages shared with Axios, FDA staffers expressed dismay at the chaos roiling the agency. Those text messages, while not shared directly with readers, are described by the outlet as showing “people disturbed by the turmoil and increasingly motivated to leave the agency — a threat heightened by how many experienced career officials have already left.” Axios also talked to former FDA employees and found very much the same: “I don’t know that I’ve talked to anyone who’s happy there,” one former staffer apparently told the outlet.
Gizmodo reached out to the HHS and FDA for comment. We also sent Mr. Tidmarsh a direct message and reached out to Aurinia Pharmaceuticals. A spokesperson for the FDA told the Times that, prior to his resignation, Tidmarsh had been placed on administrative leave “after the office of the general counsel and the office of the inspector general were notified of serious concerns about his personal conduct.”
Though he hasn’t been in office very long, Kennedy’s reign as America’s health czar has been marked by significant disruption and mayhem within the HHS. A number of agencies have seen significant turnover and layoffs. Earlier this year, the HHS fired thousands of staff and, more recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saw a number of top officials step down in protest of Kennedy’s policies. Kennedy also fired all members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee. Last month, in an unprecedented move, six former U.S. Surgeons General wrote an op-ed characterizing Kennedy as a “profound, immediate and unprecedented threat” to Americans’ health and suggesting that he step down.
