Excerpt from "CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald resigns," posted on CNN.com, January 31, 2018.
Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, resigned Wednesday, a day after Politico reported Fitzgerald's purchase of tobacco stock after she took the position at the nation's top public health agency.
Such an investment is obviously at odds with the mission of the CDC, considering cigarette smoking will result in the deaths of nearly half a million Americans this year. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.
The CDC's slogan is "24/7: Saving Lives, Protecting People." But Fitzgerald bet against that mission just one month into her tenure at the agency, when she purchased stock in a tobacco company -- one of the very drugs she is supposed to be leading the crusade against.
The news of her stock purchases was first reported Tuesday. According to that report, Fitzgerald "bought tens of thousands of dollars in new stock holdings in at least a dozen companies," including Japan Tobacco (link is external), one of the largest tobacco companies in the world. It sells four brands in the US: Export "A," LD, Wave and Wings.
The day after the purchase, Fitzgerald "toured the CDC's Tobacco Laboratory, which researches how the chemicals in tobacco harm human health," according to Politico.
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