The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, Dr. Peter Marks, abruptly resigned Friday, saying in a searing letter that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s aggressive stance on vaccines was irresponsible and posed a danger to the public.
“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.
Dr. Marks resigned under pressure, according to a person familiar with the matter who said an official with the Department of Health and Human Services told Dr. Marks on Friday that he could either resign or be fired.
Hours earlier in West Virginia, Mr. Kennedy asserted that Covid did not kill healthy people, contrary to research showing that 30 percent of those who died early in the pandemic did not have underlying conditions. Mr. Kennedy has also extolled the value of vitamin A as a treatment during a major measles outbreak in Texas, while downplaying the value of vaccines. On Thursday, he announced that he was creating a new office to study vaccine injuries.
Dr. Marks noted in his letter that measles, “which killed more than 100,000 unvaccinated children last year in Africa and Asia,” because of complications, “had been eliminated from our shores.”
He added that he had been willing to address Mr. Kennedy’s concerns about vaccine safety and transparency with a series of public meetings and by working with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, but was rebuffed.
