The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resigned Wednesday, a day after Politico reported potential conflicts of interest and financial questions.
Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald had been CDC director since July 2017, and during her tenure she traded stocks in health care companies as well as tobacco companies, Politico reported Tuesday.
Some of the stock purchases were made after Fitzgerald took over the CDC, which leads many federal anti-smoking efforts. 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,” Health and Human Services spokesman Matt Lloyd told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Due to the nature of these financial interests, Dr. Fitzgerald could not divest from them in a definitive time period.”
Fitzgerald likely would have had to recuse herself from regulatory decisions involving companies from which she profited.
A spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department told Politico that “the potentially conflicting” stock purchases were made by Fitzgerald’s financial advisor, and that the director had since divested from the problematic stocks.
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In one stock purchase made after her confirmation, Fitzgerald purchased between $1,001 and $15,000 of Japan Tobacco which sells several cigarette brands in the US. She also purchased stock pharmaceutical companies in Merck & Co. and Bayer, health insurance company Humana worth between $1,001 and $15,000. She also acquired as between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of stock US Food Holding Co.
According to Fitzgerald’s calendar, she actually visited the CDC’s Tobacco Laboratory, where researchers look for ways to mitigate the tobacco epidemic, on Aug. 9, just one day after she purchased stock in Japan Tobacco.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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