Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The US government’s top vaccine regulator has quit after attacking the “misinformation and lies” spread by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Peter Marks oversaw the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which led the US government’s programme to develop and distribute Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
Marks wrote on Friday that he was leaving the agency after a fight with Kennedy, who has been criticised for his handling of a measles outbreak across five states that has claimed the lives of at least two unvaccinated people. Texas alone has 400 cases. Kennedy is a vaccine sceptic.
“I was willing to work to address the secretary’s concerns regarding vaccine safety and transparency by hearing from the public and implementing a variety of different public meetings and engagements with the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,” Marks wrote.
“However, 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.”
Apart from his scepticism of vaccines, Kennedy has made a number of false statements about Covid-19. These included the claim that the virus could be “ethnically targeted” and that “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” are the “most immune” from it.
This month, the health department hired an analyst who has promoted the debunked theory of vaccines’ links to autism. He has been employed to study the possible links between vaccination and the condition.
Some infectious disease doctors have expressed concern that Kennedy has overemphasised the importance of nutrition and vitamin A, while downplaying vaccines, in the government’s effort to counter the measles outbreak.
Marks wrote in his letter that two-dose measles, mumps and rubella vaccination, better known as MMR, was “97 per cent or more effective in preventing measles”, that it “simply does not cause autism” while protecting against a rare neurologic disorder.
“Undermining confidence in well established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at FDA is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety and security,” wrote Marks.
“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.”
HHS officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Marks’ resignation was first reported in the Wall Street Journal.
