The director of the CDC has resigned after a jarring report about her financial holdings in the industries her agency regulates. The big one: Brenda Fitzgerald bought stock in a major tobacco company… Politics News Summaries.| Newser
(Newser)
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The director of the CDC has resigned after a jarring report about her financial holdings in the industries her agency regulates. The big one: Brenda Fitzgerald bought stock in a major tobacco company just a month after assuming her position at the Centers for Disease Control, per the original report from Politico. That raised plenty of eyebrows given the CDC’s stated mission to reduce smoking. In addition to her purchase of stock in Japan Tobacco, Fitzgerald also bought stocks in food and drug companies, including Merck, Bayer, and Humana. On Wednesday, Health and Human Services chief Alex Azar announced that he had accepted Fitzgerald’s resignation, citing her “complex financial interests,” reports the Washington Post.
Because of the investments, Fitzgerald had to recuse herself repeatedly from agency initiatives because she could not divest from them “in a definitive time period,” said Azar. It was the tobacco revelations that caught the most attention, with the attorney who served as George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer laying out the problem for Politico in common-sense terms: “You don’t buy tobacco stocks when you are the head of the CDC,” said Richard Painter. “It’s ridiculous” and “tone deaf.” Japan Tobacco is one of the biggest tobacco companies in the world and sells in the US through a subsidiary. Fitzgerald sold her tobacco shares in October, about four months after becoming the CDC chief.
