Here’s another data point for those who think Joe Biden’s administration is a wrecking
operation intentionally recruiting compromised incompetents to dismantle our federal constitutional government.
An investigation of Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, Joe Biden's nominee to lead the National Institute of Health (NIH), conducted by our friends at the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) has revealed her shocking history of incompetence as a doctor and her close multi-million-dollar ties to the very Big Pharma companies she is supposed to regulate.
Dr. Bertagnolli is the personal choice of Anthony Fauci and AAF has uncovered four medical malpractice cases that have been filed against her.
As @ChrisCPandolfo reported, in 1999, Bertagnolli was sued for malpractice in New York. A jury ultimately found her liable and ordered her to pay $450,000 in damages for pain and suffering caused to the plaintiff.
The case is unusual because it went to trial. According to Department of Justice data, only about 7% of medical malpractice lawsuits end in trial, and plaintiffs only win about a quarter of those trials.
This case concerned a hernia repair Bertagnolli performed in 1996 on a patient named Iva Falcon. Following the procedure, Falcon developed complications that required her to go through two additional surgeries.
The issue was that Bertagnolli repaired Falcon's hernia using sutures instead of mesh. Falcon alleged her hernia should have been repaired using a mesh, and expert witness testimony supported Falcon's claim that using sutures was a gross deviation from standard medical practice.
During the trial in 2001, Falcon testified about the moment Bertagnolli realized she had forgotten to use mesh during a follow-up visit after Falcon's surgery.
"She asked me didn't I put mesh inside of you, and I told her you are the doctor, I was asleep," Falcon said, according to trial transcripts. "She then left the office, came back in, ran her hands through her hair, said how could I have forgotten to put mesh inside of you."
The jury unanimously decided that Bertagnolli departed from the "good and accepted standards of medical care and practice" before awarding Falcon $450,000 in damages.
In an ongoing lawsuit in Massachusetts, Estate of Jazmine Sneed et. Al v. Monica Bertagnolli MD, began as a medical malpractice case amended in 2019 to a wrongful death suit. The plaintiff, Jazmine Sneed, died on July 22, 2019, at the age of 34. She was a wife and mother of one daughter who worked as a radiology technician at Bringham & Women's Hospital.
Summarizing the case on Dec. 17, 2001, Falcon's attorney Linda Roth called Bertagnolli "an arrogant surgeon" whose "selfish existence" made her unable "to admit what [she] did was wrong."
Sneed's estate accuses Bertagnolli of incompetence and negligence concerning a fifteen-month delay in accurately diagnosing Sneed with cancer. A medical malpractice tribunal tasked with weeding out frivolous malpractice lawsuits held in July 2021 that the complaint presents evidence that "if properly substantiated is sufficient to raise a legitimate question of liability appropriate for judicial inquiry."
A third lawsuit filed in New York City in 2000 alleged that Bertagnolli failed to diagnose the plaintiff's colon cancer. The case was discontinued with prejudice against Bertagnoli in August 2004, potentially indicating a settlement.
The fourth lawsuit of concern is Falbourn v. New York Hospital et Al., a 1999 medical malpractice lawsuit in which Bertagnolli is listed as a co-defendant. Plaintiff Donna Faulborn alleged "negligent performance" of her surgery for paravaginal repair and other conditions caused "severe and permanent injuries" that resulted in "the inability of Mrs. Faulborn to have sexual relations, urinary incontinence, as well as the necessity of two additional surgeries to correct her condition."
The lawsuit did not list specific allegations against Bertagnolli, but in light of the three other cases, it serves as yet another example of Bertagnolli being the subject of troubling allegations of carelessness. The case was dismissed with prejudice against Bertagnolli in May 2002, again likely indicating settlement.
As AAF has previously detailed, Bertagnolli's career has also been bankrolled by the very Big Pharma companies she would regulate.
1) Bertagnolli’s career was bankrolled by Big Pharma
Monica Bertagnolli is the principal investigator on numerous grants funded by the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. In 2022 alone, her grants brought in $58,975,294.40 in awards from the largest pharmaceutical companies.
Since 2016, awards from the leading pharmaceutical companies have steered a whapping $354,024,238.14 into her research programs.
Articles “fact checking” reporting on the awards try to minimize her closeness to the pharmaceutical industry claiming that, “while Pfizer awarded grants to a nonprofit that Dr. Monica Bertagnolli headed up, the money did not go directly to her." That may be accurate, but it misses the point.
Monica Bertagnolli is profiting handsomely off of the pharmaceutical industry’s support for her research. Funds have flowed through to her salary at Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Dana Farber Cancer Institute where she is a researcher. On her financial disclosure forms for her nomination to lead the NIH, (which covers the current year, 2023, and the preceding calendar year, 2022) she reported $1,609,198 in salary and bonuses from Brigham and Women’s / Dana Farber Cancer Institute. The hospital and cancer research center did not provide the massive salary to Dr. Bertagnolli out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather because she was bringing in significant research funds to the facility.
2) Bertagnolli sat on the boards of two biotech companies, receiving lucrative stock options, handsome director fees.
Bertagnolli’s support from Big Pharma doesn’t end with them supporting her research endeavors. Bertagnolli has also developed an uncomfortably close relationship with biotech firms, receiving lucrative stock options that she has cashed out and handsome director fees paid to her for corporate board membership.
Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) show that before assuming her post at the National Cancer Institute, Monica Bertagnolli was on the board of directors of two healthcare research companies, Natera, Inc., a diagnostics company, and Leap Therapeutics, a biotech company. Bertagnolli joined the board of Leap in December of 2018 and the board of Natera in November of 2020, leaving both when she was appointed as head of the National Cancer Institute in August of 2022.
Serving on the board of biotech companies pays handsomely, and for Bertagnolli, that has come in the form of both directors’ fees and stock options.
As Natera’s calendar year 2021 proxy filing with the SEC shows, Dr. Bertagnolli received $27,083 in cash, stock awards valued at $184,514 and options valued at $241,557. The proxy statement covering 2022, the year Dr. Bertagnolli resigned the board of Natera to lead the National Cancer Institute, Natera, a company which partners with National Cancer Institute funded research centers, paid Dr. Bertagnolli $26,425 in cash, and awarded her stock valued at $291,131. The largesse from Bertagnolli’s close ties to the healthcare industry was felt even after she joined the National Cancer Institute and had left the Board of Natera, with Dr. Bertagnolli cashing out between $250,000 and $500,000 in Natera stock in December of 2022, when she was leading the National Cancer Institute.
Dr. Bertagnolli’s service on the board of Leap Therapeutics was equally lucrative. In their fiscal year 2021 proxy statement, they noted that Dr. Bertagnolli received $27,125 in cash compensation and stock options valued at $78,926. In their proxy statement covering the fiscal year 2022, the company paid Dr. Bertagnolli, $32,813 in cash and $72,841 in stock option awards.
3) Bertagnolli Carried the Water for Drug Companies During Drug Price Debate
In addition to her service on corporate boards, Bertagnolli has led non-profit foundations. During the Trump Administration, as chair of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Bertagnolli helped lead the push back against the Trump administration’s Most Favored Nation pricing proposal for prescription drugs, stating that “Because of the harm to patients, ASCO must strongly oppose the MFN model... This model, which imposes a nationwide, mandatory experiment without the ability to actually learn whether this is an optimal approach, will drastically cut reimbursement for a number of life-saving cancer drug treatments, significantly limiting access to care for Medicare beneficiaries. Implementing such a model during the COVID19 pandemic will also further strain oncologists’ ability to provide high-quality, equitable cancer care.”
The Capitol Switchboard is (202-224-3121), call today and tell your Senators that America can’t afford to have our National Institutes of Health led another incompetent doctor who has been compromised by Big Pharma. Demand that they vote “NO” on the nomination of Dr. Monica Bertagnolli.
Biden appointees
Doctor Monica Bertagnolli
NIH
Anthony Fauci
COVID
Gain of function research
Big Pharma
medical malpractice suits
Jazmine Sneed
research funds
Biotech company boards
National Cancer Institute
Natera