It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, Dr. Peter Marks, abruptly resigned Friday, saying in a searing letter that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s aggressive stance on vaccines was irresponsible and posed a danger to the public: “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Dr. Marks wrote to Sara Brenner, the agency’s acting commissioner.
Dr. Marks resigned under pressure, according to a person familiar with the matter who said an official with the Department of Health and Human Services told Dr. Marks on Friday that he could either resign or be fired.
Hours earlier in West Virginia, Mr. Kennedy asserted that Covid did not kill healthy people, contrary to research showing that 30 percent of those who died early in the pandemic did not have underlying conditions. Mr. Kennedy has also extolled the value of vitamin A as a treatment during a major measles outbreak in Texas, while downplaying the value of vaccines. On Thursday, he announced that he was creating a new office to study vaccine injuries.
Dr. Marks noted in his letter that measles, “which killed more than 100,000 unvaccinated children last year in Africa and Asia,” because of complications, “had been eliminated from our shores.” He added that he had been willing to address Mr. Kennedy’s concerns about vaccine safety and transparency with a series of public meetings and by working with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, but was rebuffed.
“Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at F.D.A. is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety and security,” Dr. Marks wrote.
He went on to express his desire for the current administration’s damage to be limited: “My hope is that during the coming years, the unprecedented assault on scientific truth that has adversely impacted public health in our nation comes to an end so that the citizens of our country can fully benefit from the breadth of advances in medical science,” Dr. Marks wrote.
Dr. Marks did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for H.H.S., issued a statement Friday night: “If Peter Marks does not want to get behind restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency, then he has no place at F.D.A. under the strong leadership of Secretary Kennedy.”
Dr. Marks steered the F.D.A.’s vaccine program during the tumultuous years of the coronavirus pandemic, guiding the agency and its outside advisers through multiple decisions about the kind of evidence that was necessary to grant emergency authorization for the vaccines produced under the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.
In June 2022, he pleaded with a committee of outside experts to consider the danger the virus posed to children younger than 5; the panel voted later that day to recommend vaccines for that age group.
“We have to be careful that we don’t become numb to the number of pediatric deaths because of the overwhelming number of older deaths here,” Dr. Marks said at the time.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert from Baylor University, said “He was one of the heroes of the pandemic, so I’m sorry to see him go.” Dr. Peter Lurie, a former F.D.A. associate commissioner, called it “a real tragedy” when someone like Dr. Marks runs afoul of “these alleged distortions.”
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved. Powered by Vanilla
Comments
Kennedy's senseless, irresponsible actions regarding vaccines.
The following comments were included in an editorial by the conservative WSJ Editorial Board.
"Mr. Geier has spent decades spreading the discredited theory, embraced by Mr. Kennedy, that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism and neurological damage in children. He has published more than a dozen studies that trial lawyers have cited as evidence of vaccines’ harms, though they have been rejected by judges and the government’s special vaccine courts."
"Mr. Geier has also accused the CDC of concealing vaccine safety data and claimed that better nutrition and hygiene—not vaccines—are responsible for the disappearance of deadly infectious diseases. If Mr. Kennedy truly wants an independent, impartial review of vaccine data, Mr. Geier is the wrong man for the job. The study’s results look preordained."
"Mr. Marks writes in his resignation letter that he was willing to work with Mr. Kennedy to address his 'concerns regarding vaccine safety and transparency.' However, he adds, 'it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.'”