Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA's senior vaccine scientist to resigned

Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration's top vaccine regulator, has resigned, a Department of Health and Human Services official announced Friday.

Dr. Peter Marks, the head of the agency's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, was given the option of resigning or being dismissed. Marks' resignation becomes effective April 5.

“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 FDA under the strong leadership of Secretary Kennedy,” a spokesperson at HHS said.

His ongoing control of the FDA's vaccination program plainly placed him at conflict with the incoming health secretary. Since being inaugurated in on February 13, Mr. Kennedy has issued a series of vaccination policy directives indicating his readiness to reverse decades of vaccine safety rules.

“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. He reiterated the sentiments in an interview, saying: “This man doesn’t care about the truth. He cares about what is making him followers.”

The FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research oversees the safety and efficacy of biological products such as vaccinations, allergenic products, blood and blood products, and cellular, tissue, and gene treatments.

Since 2016, Marks has managed the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, often known as CBER. Marks helped guide the country through the Covid epidemic, licensing the first Covid vaccinations in late 2020, first from Pfizer-BioNTech and then, shortly after, Moderna. He helped start Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's first private-public cooperation to produce vaccinations swiftly.

Kennedy, an anti-vaccine campaigner, has criticized the Covid vaccinations and filed a citizen petition in 2021 seeking that the FDA rescind the vaccines' license. In the same year, he classified the Covid vaccination as the "deadliest vaccine ever made."

Kennedy has also sought to erode trust in the measles vaccination during the worst epidemic in the United States since 2019. While he believes vaccinations protect children from measles, he also believes the decision to vaccinate is a "personal" one.

Earlier this month, HHS directed the CDC to investigate vaccinations and autism, despite solid evidence that vaccines do not cause autism.

Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and Covid-19 response coordinator during the Biden administration, said on X that Marks is a brilliant scientist who “helped usher in scientific rigor and transparency into the FDA.”

Jha said that removing him weakens and reduces the FDA's effectiveness significantly. "This is not how we make America healthy."