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Christine Grady

NIH bio - Chief, Bioethics & Head, Section on Human Subjects Research

Dr. Grady is a nurse-bioethicist and a senior investigator who currently serves as the Chief of the Department of Bioethics.

Dr. Grady has authored more than 175 papers in the biomedical and bioethics literature and authored or edited several books, including The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics.

She served from 2010-2017 as a Commissioner on the President’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Her work is known internationally, and she has lectured widely on ethical issues in clinical research and clinical care, HIV disease, and nursing. She is an elected fellow of the Hastings Center and of the American Academy of Nursing, a senior research fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

She holds a BS in nursing and biology from Georgetown University, a MSN. in community health nursing from Boston College, and a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown University.

She has participated in numerous intergovernmental task forces and is the recipient of several awards, including the NIH CEO Award in 2017 , and the NIH Director's Award in 2015 and 2017. 1)

March 2, 2012 - International voice in human subjects protections named NIH Clinical Center bioethics chief

Christine Grady, Ph.D., was recently named chief of the Department of Bioethics of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center. Grady has served as deputy director of the department since 1996 and served as acting chief since September 2011.

Grady is currently a member of President Obama's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and is a senior research fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. She is a fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing and the Hastings Center. Grady has served as a consultant to international bodies such as UNAIDS (1996 and 1998) and the Pan American Health Organization (1999) and spent two years in Brazil with Project Hope. 2)

Personal Life

Children- Megan Fauci, Jennifer Fauci, Alison Fauci Parents- John H. Grady Jr., Barbara Grady Born- February 7, 1952 (age 70 years), Livingston, NJ Spouse - Anthony Fauci (m. 1985)

Role in COVID Vaccines

Both Dr. Anthony Fauci (medical doctor) and Dr. Christine Grady (Ph.D., not a medical doctor) work for the NIH (part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), along with about 20,260 others in 27 institutes and centers of different biomedical disciplines, such as the National Cancer Institute, National Eye Institute, National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Drug Abuse and more.

Anthony Fauci directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), one of the 27 major institutes, and is chief medical adviser to the president.

Meanwhile, Christine Grady is a nurse-bioethicist and chief of the Department of Bioethics of the Clinical Center of the NIH, the nation’s largest hospital devoted to clinical research. Note, this is a separate division from that of her husband, which reports directly to the National Institutes of Health.

Grady specifically works in ethics of clinical research, like study design, informed consent, recruitment, vulnerability, as well as ethical issues faced by nurses and other health care providers. 3)

Grady’s NIH and Fauci’s NIAID

NIAID “conducts and supports basic and applied research to better understand, treat, and ultimately prevent infectious, immunologic, and allergic diseases.” Indeed, among the 27 comprising institutes and centers of the NIH, NIAID has the “unique mandate” to “respond to emerging public health threats.”

In its research and operation, the NIAID is guided by the ethics of the NIH. This means essentially that Grady’s decisions on ethics are intimately linked to, and inform her husband’s decisions on vaccine research and development. The NIAID participated in the development of COVID-19 vaccines (namely the Moderna jab), and the trialing of the vaccines.

One of the most controversial projects in which NIH has been involved has been the creation of “humanized mice,” transplanting into mice tissue from aborted babies.

And now, as Elle gushingly reported, Grady is “spearheading research into the ethics of America’s COVID-19 response.” 4)

However, despite the NIH developing and giving the ethical green light to coronavirus injections – particularly Moderna’s, which was made with help by NIAID scientists – the number of deaths and adverse reactions continue to grow each week following administration of the injection. 5)

Ethical Arguments for Covert Public Drugging

Why does the federal government need a secret plan? Because half of the American citizens refuse to take vaccines.According to Francis Collins, M.D. He heads the National Institute of Health (NIH). 6)

The solution? A secret plan to drug public drinking water with psych drugs. The federal government can do that? If it is “for the public good.” Who determines the public good? Christine Grady, RN, Ph.D.? She is Dr. Anthony Fauci’s wife. Or their boss? Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).7)

Compulsory moral bioenhancement should be covert

Parker Crutchfield January 2019 PMID: 30157295 DOI: 10.1111/bioe.12496 )) Abstract - Some theorists argue that moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory. I take this argument one step further, arguing that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration ought to be covert rather than overt. This is to say that it is morally preferable for compulsory moral bioenhancement to be administered without the recipients knowing that they are receiving the enhancement. My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics.

I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program.8)

How Fauci and Grady Degraded the Standards of Ethical Requirements for Clinical Research in the US Compared to the Rest of the World ((https://web.archive.org/web/20220728004837/https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/how-fauci-and-grady-lowered-the-standards))

The Virtuous Investigator: The Way Forward

The virtuous investigator who is motivated to take ethical responsibilities seriously is an essential safeguard for the protection of human research participants and an important complement to the system of oversight protections. However, since the current human subjects protection system does not promote virtue or ethical resourcefulness by investigators, attention to enhancing a culture of professional responsibility might serve to forge a synergy between the protections afforded by the current oversight system and those provided by the virtuous investigator.

Unfortunately, the current human subjects protections system has had the ironic effect of diminishing explicit reliance on the virtuous investigator and in some cases alienating investigators. Strategies that synergize the regulatory protections with a more rigorous culture of responsibility among investigators could help restore a healthier balance.9)

COVID Policy PR Campaigns

Monday November 1, 2021

The Greenwall Foundation’s 2021 William C. Stubing Memorial Lecture, Confronting the Public Health and Ethical Challenges of COVID-19, drew more than 650 participants to an evening of discussion featuring the public health duo leading the fight against COVID-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Christine Grady. The virtual Lecture was moderated by CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and produced in partnership with the NYU School of Global Public Health and its Center for Bioethics.

The wide-ranging discussion touched on trust in science, how decision-makers should approach misinformation and divisiveness, and reasons to be optimistic in the face of the pandemic. Dr. Gupta began the conversation by broaching the topic of public health and how it relates to the individual and society at large. “So much of what we ask people to do when it comes to a pandemic like this, and public health, is not only [to] do things for themselves but [to] do things for the collective,” he said.

There’s a classic tension between public health and individual interests and freedoms,” said Dr. Grady. “There are principles to public health ethics that help you sort out the kinds of interventions we should use… things that are effective, that are proportional, where the benefits outweigh the risks, that are necessary, [with] the least infringement possible and are transparent, that we can publicly justify.”

She added, “The challenge has been that some people view those public health requests as more than a sort of minor infringement on their rights and freedoms.”

Dr. Gupta asked Dr. Fauci and Dr. Grady if they thought people expected a “certainty” in science, and how that perception has affected the pandemic response. Dr. Fauci said that “science is self-correcting. Science is seeking the truth, data, and evidence.”

“The public has paid more attention to science during this pandemic than maybe most other times,” said Dr. Grady. “[What] comes with knowing about science and paying attention to science [is] a realization of how messy science can be, how uncertain it can be, and how things do change over time.”

Dr. Grady acknowledged there are reasons beyond misinformation why trust has diminished. “Trust was tested because it appeared we weren’t as prepared for the pandemic as we should have been,” she said. In the beginning “there [were] a lot of chaotic responses” with testing, PPE, a loss of public health infrastructure, and conflicting messages from the Federal government.

William C. Stubing served as President of The Greenwall Foundation for 21 years. In 2016, the Foundation established the William C. Stubing Memorial Lecture in honor of its beloved former President, who guided the Foundation to its current focus on bioethics.

Previous Lectures have covered timely topics in bioethics: the history of prejudice in pandemics, genome editing, physician aid-in-dying, and drug pricing. Past speakers are Pulitzer Prize winner, Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, University of Pennsylvania President, Dr. Amy Gutmann, and former White House health policy advisor, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel. 10)

Elle Magazine

In late January, Dr. Christine Grady's husband, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was tapped to join the White House COVID-19 task force. It didn't take long for the American public to lionize the soft-spoken infectious disease expert. His bespectacled face was meme-ified and printed on coffee mugs, masks, and prayer candles. He inspired love songs and appeared on late-night talk shows. The New Yorker dubbed him “America’s Doctor,” and Brad Pitt played him on SNL. In a moment when everything seemed to be spinning out of control, Fauci's televised plain talk united people desperate for the facts and for a trustworthy figurehead. But Grady—who has three grown daughters with Fauci—describes his sudden rise to fame as a “mixed bag” for their family.

“I mean, I think it’s great that he’s able to communicate with people in ways that make things clearer and that make people feel supported and calmer,“ she tells ELLE.com via phone. “He’s working an unbelievable amount of hours and not taking many breaks for himself. I do think it’s resulted in what I would call unwanted attention on me and my children. That’s the unfortunate side.”

Grady began her career at the NIH Clinical Center as a clinical nurse specialist in the immunology and infections disease area, before serving as a deputy director for the bioethics department. She was made chief in 2012, leading investigations into recruitments for scientific studies, incentives, vulnerability, and consents. She's well known for her work with HIV and AIDS patients in the 1980s, which led to the publication of her book, ” Ethical Issues in the Development and Testing of a Preventive HIV Vaccine.”

Now she's spearheading research into the ethics of America's COVID-19 response. As of publication date, the virus has reportedly infected more than 7.1 million people worldwide, with at least 408,000 deaths. In an email to ELLE.com, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins describes Grady's analysis of the pandemic as “invaluable” to the institution, which is the largest biomedical research agency in the world.

From a laptop, Grady virtually oversees a team of 30 NIH bioethicists and research fellows, all with diverse backgrounds in law, philosophy, and sociology. The rest of her day is spent consulting with scientists from around the country studying COVID-19 and conducting her own research on the virus.

“We also looked at what it's like taking care of a patient when there are no visitors allowed,” Grady says. “Nurses often step in to be a surrogate family member or must think of creative ways to bring in family members using technology [when someone is being quarantined].”

In May when the Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of remdesivir —an experimental drug shown to work in COVID-19 patients— Grady consulted with scientists about how it was being allocated. Gilead Sciences, the company making remdesivir, donated 940,000 vials of the drug (enough for about 120,512 patients), according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But now that supply is running low, there are concerns Gilead will charge a high price for the medication, according to CNN.

Like so many of us adapting to this new housebound normal, Grady misses dinner parties and meeting up with friends. But mostly, she's nostalgic for normalcy—before 26,000 people signed a petition to make her husband People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive and before he became a best-selling bobblehead. 11)

CBS News Interview Fauci & Grady

2020 Q&A - Dr. Fauci Says, “With All Due Modesty, I Think I’m Pretty Effective.”

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) – Dr. Anthony Fauci and his wife, Dr. Christine Grady, spoke with CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell about a potential COVID-19 vaccine, working with the White House, and what life is like at home.(key quotes from video)

Fauci - I don’t like to phrase it in the context of what we’ve done wrong, as opposed to let’s take a look at what happened and maybe we can have lessons learned. We never got it down to baseline for a number of reasons. Perhaps it was the lack of compliance of people in the country or the kinds of restrictions that we felt would be appropriate. If you look at the European curve, they came down essentially to baseline, which is very different than us. So, [they] stomped out the infection pretty well. When they started to open up again, there wasn’t that much infection around. If you look at the European countries, they shut down about 90 to 95 percent of the country. Whereas when we shut down, the calculation is that we shut down about 50 percent.

I don’t want to see [the country] going back down to complete lockdown. I think that it will be very difficult for the States to accept that. As we try to proceed, we need to really take seriously the issue of wearing masks all the time and not congregating in bars. I think we can stop that by just closing them, because they are certainly an important mechanism of this spread. Keep distances, wash hands, avoid crowds, wear a mask … I think if we diligently do those things, we can turn this around.

It was very good news that the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the Phase 1 trial substantial titers of neutralizing antibodies were induced, which is the gold standard for prediction of protection. So that was a very good news story for the day. We’re going to start the Phase 3 trial in the third or fourth week of July. That is going to take place over the rest of the summer and into the fall. If all goes well and there aren’t any unanticipated bumps in the road, hopefully, we should know whether the vaccine is safe and effective by the end of this calendar year, or the beginning of 2021.

By the beginning of the year we should have the first tens of millions and then hundreds of millions of doses. That being the case, I would think we could vaccinate a substantial portion of the population as we get into 2021 — if the vaccine is safe and effective.

Grady - Well, I would say that masks shouldn’t be divisive. It’s a relatively easy way to protect one’s self and others. And so for public health reasons, I think everybody should do it. From an ethical perspective there is always this tension between what you ask people to do that feels like a restriction of their liberty and what is required for public health. And in this case, it seems like a slam dunk. It’s not restricting liberty much, and it’s very helpful for public health.

Bioethics is a wonderful complement to science because all scientific endeavors have interesting bioethical issues. You have to understand the science in order to understand the ethical issues, and then you think about them in a constructive and useful way 12)

Mrs Fauci on the Ethics of Encouraging Employees to get Vaccinated

August 5, 2022 Naked Emperor Substack

Should employers encourage their employees to get the COVID-19 vaccination? Of course not, they pay their employees to do a job, not lecture them on their life choices. However, some people think employers should be encouraging vaccination. If so, is it ethical?

To me the answer is no it is not, but a paper from March of this year looked at this issue. Whilst this is four months or so old, it shows the mindset of the authors which I very much doubt has changed. Although the paper is a few months old, we basically had the same information on transmission, infection, hospitalisation and death as we do now.

Very often, the first author on a scientific paper makes the most contributions to the research work whilst the last author is the person responsible for the whole project. In this paper, published in the Journal of Public Health Policy, Christine Grady is the last author, meaning she was probably in charge of putting it together.

Who is Christine Grady? Christine is a bioethicist who is currently the head of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in the US. (the paper is also funded by the Intramural Research Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute). Does she have any conflicts of interest? A quick scan to the bottom of the paper tells us she doesn’t. 13)

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