Fauci’s Wife, An NIH Bioethicist Who Never Probed Ethics Of Wuhan Research, Fired

Christine Grady, a top bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health and the wife of former top NIH official Anthony Fauci, was among the health bureaucrats who received a layoff notice on Tuesday, according to news reports.

Grady was given the boot as part of the post-pandemic restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to the New York Times and STAT News. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his top aides have said the layoffs are aimed at consolidating administrative functions and overhauling a failed status quo in Americans’ health.

Some NIH leaders were given the option of transferring to one of the field offices of the Indian Health Service in Alaska, Montana, Minnesota, and other locations far removed from Washington, DC. But it’s not clear whether Grady was among the officials given the option of taking up a remote post hundreds of miles from the couple’s tony Beltway neighborhood. The couple had a net worth of $11.5 million by the time of Fauci’s 2022 retirement, according to federal disclosures, a $7.6 million jump from before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Open The Books.

Even an NIH official who described Grady as well respected acknowledged that her marriage to Fauci impacted the ability of the institutes to tackle ethical questions that risked reflecting poorly on the former White House medical advisor.