US spe­cial coun­sel looks in­to al­leged mis­con­duct at Mer­ck plant prep­ping to make J&J shot — and in­dif­fer­ence from FDA

The US Of­fice of Spe­cial Coun­sel has un­veiled the de­tails of a whistle­blow­er com­plaint from a for­mer FDA em­ploy­ee who al­leged nu­mer­ous vi­o­la­tions at a Mer­ck man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in North Car­oli­na that’s now be­ing read­ied to make the J&J Covid-19 vac­cine, even ex­plain­ing how em­ploy­ees were soil­ing them­selves to avoid bath­room breaks that would re­quire them to leave man­u­fac­tur­ing ar­eas.

The OSC re­port, pub­lished Wednes­day, fea­tures a let­ter from Arie Men­achem, the for­mer FDA in­spec­tor turned whistle­blow­er, who claims that the agency learned of these vi­o­la­tions, among oth­ers, in 2018, and didn’t act up­on them. The re­port al­so al­leges that Mer­ck was in­ten­tion­al­ly de­stroy­ing ev­i­dence of pos­si­ble vi­o­la­tions.

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