A senior health official in the United States, who has been considered a railing against any future politicization of approval by Food and Drug Administration of vital vaccines, resigned suddenly, quoting the Secretary of Health Robert F Kennedy Jr “Misinformation and Lies”.
Dr. Peter Marks was the highest official of the FDA vaccine. He had been praised by Donald Trump in the first term of the American president for his role in Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that developed, manufactured and helped to distribute COVVI-19 vaccines.
Several media, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, citing people familiar with the issue, reported late Friday that Marks had the choice to resign or be dismissed by a head of the Department of Health and Social Services (HHS). He chose to resign. The FDA is a key federal agency within the HHS.
In a letter of resignation, referring to Kennedy, Marks wrote: “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but he rather wishes the subordinate confirmation of his disinformation and his lies.”
Marks also issued a striking warning, according to the media which obtained the letter, saying: “Presentation of confidence in well -established vaccines that have respected the high quality, safety and efficiency standards that have been in place for decades at the FDA, the health and safety of our country.”
The departure follows the reports according to which Kennedy turned to a noted vaccination skeptic, David Geier, to direct the HHS in a study of potential links between vaccines and autism. Any link between autism and vaccines has long been demystified.
Kennedy said he was not anti-vaccine, but for years he led a movement to sow doubts about their safety and efficiency. In 2021, a group led by Kennedy called for the revocation of the emergency approval of COVVI-19 vaccines, saying: “The current risks of serious adverse events or death prevailed over the advantages.”
Studies have later shown that the complaint was inaccurate. A Commonwealth Fund study revealed that COVVI-19 vaccines saved 3.2 million American lives and prevented more than 18 million hospitalizations until November 2022.
During his confirmation process, Kennedy finally obtained the votes of almost all Republican senators, including Dr. Bill Cassidy de Louisiana, promising that he would not change the FDA system for the approval of vaccines.
But this system has been supervised by Marks, who has worked in the FDA since 2012 and supervised the division approval process for vaccines, biotechnologies and blood products.
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The Wall Street Journal reported a statement on the resignation by an HHS manager: “If Peter Marks does not want to be behind the restoration of science to its gold standard and promote radical transparency, then it has no place in the FDA under the strong direction of secretary Kennedy.”
The departure of Marks occurs a day after the Trump administration said that it linked 10,000 employees to HHS. In comments on the move published on YouTube, Kennedy suggested that his office was confronted with the opposition within the department of “provocative bureaucrats” which had prevented his office from accessing “closely kept databases which could reveal the dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions”.
The Guardian asked for more information on Kennedy’s remarks but has not yet received a comment from HHS. Some experts have warned that Kennedy and other senior health officials appointed by Trump could seek to challenge authorization behind COVVI-19 vaccines. Kennedy also said in his confirmation hearings that Trump had asked him to study the safety of mifepristone, which is used for drug abortion and has already been widely studied for safety.
We do not know which specific databases to which Kennedy referred to in his YouTube declaration. When pharmaceutical companies seek FDA approval for the drugs they have developed, they disclose proprietary information, that the FDA Keeper Confidential. This includes information on manufacturing methods and clinical study reports.
