Covid-19 roundup: EU‘s top sci­en­tist re­signs in re­buke to agency’s Covid re­sponse; J&J posts neg­a­tive da­ta for its HIV drug

As the nov­el coro­n­avirus took root around the globe in ear­ly March, the Eu­ro­pean Union’s top sci­en­tist pro­posed launch­ing a pro­gram that would fund the world’s top re­searchers work­ing on new drugs, vac­cines, di­ag­nos­tic tools and oth­er tools in the Covid-19 re­sponse.

But to­day, Mau­ro Fer­rari, the Ital­ian-Amer­i­can who leads the Eu­ro­pean Re­search Coun­cil, is re­sign­ing. He told the Fi­nan­cial Times that he was met with unan­i­mous op­po­si­tion from the ERC’s gov­ern­ing Sci­en­tif­ic Coun­cil, who said they were on­ly al­lowed to fund “bot­tom-up” re­search pro­posed by sci­en­tists and not give “top-down” dic­tates that re­flect­ed EU pri­or­i­ties.

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