FDA's Top Vaccine Scientist Is Out, Citing RFK Jr.'s 'Lies'

The Food and Drug Adminstration's top vaccine regulator has stepped down from his role, and it's reportedly because he was forced out by the Trump administration via Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., reports the Washington Post. Sources tell the paper that Marks was offered the option to leave of his own volition or be fired; he reportedly chose the former, with his departure day set for April 5.

• Goodbye: In his resignation letter to Sara Brenner, the FDA's acting commissioner, Marks was blunt about the reasons for his departure from the agency, which he'd been a part of since 2012. "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," Marks wrote of RFK Jr. In an interview with the New York Times, Marks added: "This man doesn't care about the truth. He cares about what is making him followers."

• Measles: One sticking point for Marks is the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico, which he wrote "reminds us of what happens when confidence in well-established science underlying public health and well-being is undermined." Kennedy has criticized measles vaccines in the past, per the Post, and ProPublica reported this week that the CDC, one of the agencies under Kennedy's purview, "buried a measles forecast" that emphasized how important getting vaccinated against the disease is. "It is unconscionable with measles outbreaks to not have a full-throated endorsement of measles vaccinations," Marks tells the Post.
• HHS reaction: Kennedy's agency doesn't seem to be losing sleep over the resignation of Marks, who drove the FDA's COVID vaccine program during the pandemic and leads the agency's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. "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 [the] FDA under the strong leadership of Secretary Kennedy," an HHS rep tells NBC News.
• Other reaction: Marks' longtime FDA leadership "is a big reason why the FDA is the gold standard for advancing the most innovative breakthrough medicines," Mark McClellan, who was FDA commissioner in the GW Bush administration, tells the Post. Scott Gottlieb, the agency's chief in President Trump's first term, adds, "We're failing to appreciate the people and institutions who've propelled these remarkable advances ... and risking the loss of future breakthroughs that many patients are counting on."
• Marks' final word: The scientist tried to end his letter to Brenner on a somewhat optimistic note. "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," he wrote.

(More Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stories.)