The best official of the Vaccino against Food and Drug Administration, dr. Peter Marks resigned under pressure on Friday and said that the health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccines was irresponsible and represented a danger to the public.
“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather wants a subordant confirmation of its disinformation and lies,” wrote dr. Marks to Sara Brenner, interim commissioner. He reiterated the feelings in an interview, saying: “This man doesn’t care truth. He worries about what is following him”.
Dr. Marks resigned after being summoned to the Department of Health and Human Services on Friday afternoon and said he could stop or be fired, according to a person who is familiar with the matter.
Dr. Marks led the center for biological evaluation and research of the agency, which authorized and monitored the safety of vaccines and a wide range of other treatments, including cellular and genical therapies. It was seen as a stable hand by many during Covid’s pandemic, but had been criticized to be excessively generous with companies looking for approvals for therapies with contrasting tests of a benefit.
His continuous supervision of the FDA vaccine program has clearly contrast him with the new Secretary of Health. Since Kennedy has sworn on February 13, he has issued a series of directives on vaccine policy that have reported his will to reveal decades of vaccine security policies. He has shocked the people who fear that he will use his powerful government authority to further further campaign to argue that the vaccines are individually harmful, despite the vast proof of their role in saving millions of lives all over the world.
“Making confidence in consolidated vaccines that have satisfied the high standards for the quality, safety and efficacy that are underway for decades to the FDA is irresponsible, harmful to public health and a clear danger to the health, safety and safety of our nation”, wrote Dr. Marks.
Kennedy has, for example, promoted the value of vitamin A as treatment during the measles epidemic in Texas, minimizing the value of vaccines. He installed a analyst with deep ties with the anti-Vaccine movement to work on a study that examines the theory for a long time according to which the vaccines are connected to autism.
And Thursday, Kennedy said about NewsNation that she planned to create an agency of vaccine injuries within the centers for the control and prevention of diseases. He said that the effort was a priority for him and would have contributed to bringing “Standard Golden Science” to the Federal Government.
An HHS spokesman declared in a statement on Friday evening that Dr. Marks had not placed at the FDA if he were not engaged in transparency.
In his letter, Dr. Marks mentioned the deadly Toll of Morbillo in the light of the warm advice of Mr. Kennedy on the need for immunization during the epidemic between many people not vaccinated in Texas and in other states.
Dr. Marks wrote that measles, “who killed more than 100,000 children not vaccinated last year in Africa and Asia”, due to the complications, “had been eliminated from our coasts” through the widespread availability of vaccines.
Dr. Marks added that he was willing to respond to Mr. Kennedy’s concerns about the safety and transparency of vaccines with public meetings and working with the national academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, but was rejected.
“I did everything possible for this administration to work with them in an attempt to restore confidence in vaccines,” said dr. Marks in the interview. “It has become clear that it is not what they wanted.”
Leaving the FDA, added Dr. Marks, it was a “weight raised by me, because I was in an environment in which it was increasingly in danger in danger”.
Ellen V. Sigal, founder of the Friends of Cancer Research defense group and a close ally of Dr. Marks’s, said that his “leadership has been decisive to guide medical innovation and ensure that life -saving treatments reach patients who need it most”. His departure, he said, “will create a significant void”.
John Crowley, CEO of Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the commercial association of the biotechnology industry, has also praised Dr. Marks leadership and added a warning on the future of the agency: “We are profoundly worried that the loss of the expert leadership of the FDA will be Herod at the scientific standards and the development of the new transformative therapies for the struggle for the struggle for the struggle for the struggle for the struggle for the struggle for the struggle For the struggle for American people “he said in a Saturday declaration.
Dr. Marks led the FDA vaccine program during the tumultuous years of the Pandemia di Coronavirus, guiding the agency and its external consultants through a series of decisions on the type of tests necessary to grant the emergency authorization for vaccines produced under the Warp Speed Initiative operation of the Trump Administration.
In June 2022, he begged a committee of external experts to consider the danger that the virus placed children under the age of 5; The panel voted later that day to recommend vaccines for that age group.
“We must be careful not to become insensitive to the number of pediatric deaths due to the overwhelming number of older deaths here,” said dr. Marks at that moment.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a Baylor College of Medicine vaccine expert, said he had spoken regularly with Dr. Marks during the pandemic. “He was extraordinarily busy using science to help the American people,” he said. “He was one of the heroes of the pandemic, so I’m sorry to see him go.”
Dr. Marks was seen skeptically by some at the FDA, including former members of his vaccine team. The two most senior regulators of the Agency’s vaccine office resigned in 2021 in part due to a biden administrative effort to accelerate the licenses of the Pfizer Coronavirus blow and the authorization of Covid Booster Shots.
While Mr. Kennedy pushed for further studies on vaccine injuries, dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the center for infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said that this research has already been a priority for decades.
“I’m afraid that this is a way to emphasize vaccine injuries in a completely disproportionate way compared to real risk,” he said.
Dr. Marks has clearly shared those concerns. In his letter, he expressed the desire that the damage caused by the current administration was limited.
“My hope”, he wrote, “is that in the coming years, the unprecedented assault on the scientific truth that has had a negative impact on public health in our nation concludes so that the citizens of our country can fully benefit from the amplitude of progress in the medical sciences”.