FDA names Dr. Vinay Prasad as top vaccine official
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Drugmaker shares sink after key FDA official ousted
Shares of U.S. drugmakers fell after reports that the Food and Drug Administration's top vaccine official had been forced to resign. The ouster of Dr. Peter Marks played a key role in developing COVID-19 vaccines during President Trump's first term.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has tapped Dr. Vinay Prasad, an oncologist who has previously criticized FDA leadership and COVID-19 mandates, as the director of its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the agency said on May 6.
A harsh critic of the government's vaccine policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, Prasad will oversee the regulation of costly drugs, including vaccines, gene therapies and blood supply. He replaces Dr. Peter Marks, who led the division for 13 years and helped shape Operation Warp Speed to deliver vaccines during the pandemic.
The FDA's commissioner, Marty Makary, announced Prasad's appointment in an email to staff and on social media.
"Dr. Prasad brings the kind of scientific rigor, independence, and transparency we need at CBER — a significant step forward," Makary said.
A long-time COVID vaccine critic
In a recent blog post on the Substack platform, Prasad said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "should ABSOLUTELY remove COVID-19 from the Childhood Immunization schedule. If it stays, it shows the United States is a corrupt country," citing the lack of randomized trial evidence for use of the vaccines in children.
'The only 'emergency' America still faces with COVID-19 is that regulators like Peter Marks are either incompetent or corrupt to authorize a booster without clinical, randomized data,' he said.
Moreover, Prasad has been a harsh critic of his predecessor, Marks, calling him a 'mediocre academic' and "one of the most dangerous, pro-pharma regulators of the 21st century,' shortly after Marks resigned earlier this year.
Prasad comes to the FDA from the University of California, San Francisco, according to Reuters. He holds a medical degree from the University of Chicago, and has had stints at the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health.
Reuters contributed to the reporting on this story.
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@gannett.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.
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