HHS Backs Protection For Special Consultant

[Rose Siding]

The Department of Health and Human Services filed a legal petition this week in support of an employee the department is trying to fire.

HHS told the Merit Systems Protection Board that Jonathan M. Fishbein, a clinical research specialist who has been told he will lose his job at the National Institutes of Health, should be eligible for protection from any official retaliation under federal whistle-blower laws.
...
The petition is in response to a November ruling by an administrative law judge that Fishbein could not seek whistle-blower protection before the MSPB because the department had employed him as a "special consultant" outside regular civil service laws. Attorneys for Fishbein have appealed the ruling to the full board.
...
Fishbein said NIH is trying to fire him in retaliation for his refusal to overlook shortcomings in research practices, including not obtaining proper informed consent, in NIH-sponsored studies of the drug nevirapine on African research subjects. NIH officials have said the doctor, who is in a two-year probationary period, is being let go because of poor performance.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55392-2005Feb1.html?nav=rss_politics

"HHS says HHS blows"??? Does this make any sense?