Two days after he was sworn into office, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar accepted the resignation of Centers for Disease Control director Brenda Fitzgerald, whose six-month tenure at the agency ended in a warren of “complex financial interests” that prevented her from doing her job, said the HHS. Fitzgerald left the CDC a day after reports surfaced that she had purchased shares in a tobacco company a month after her appointment as leader of the public health agency.
“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,” said the HHS in a statement. “Due to the nature of these financial interests, Dr. Fitzgerald could not divest from them in a definitive time period. After advising Secretary Azar of both the status of the financial interests and the scope of her recusal, Dr. Fitzgerald tendered, and the secretary accepted, her resignation.”
Fitzgerald “bought shares in a tobacco company one month into her leadership of the agency charged with reducing tobacco use,” reported Politico on Tuesday. The stock in Japan Tobacco, which has a U.S. subsidiary, was “one of about a dozen new investments” Fitzgerald made after arriving at the CDC, including stock in drug companies Merck and Bayer and health insurer Humana, said Politico.
“Those conflicts began to attract criticism last year, and the revelations about Fitzgerald’s trading in tobacco companies drew strong condemnation from consumer advocates, public health experts, and others,” said the Los Angeles Times. “The stock trading echoes the behavior of Trump’s first Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, who was forced to resign last year amid questions about his frequent use of charter aircraft at taxpayer expense.”