Dr. Peter Marks, a veteran official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who helped establish the U.S. effort to rapidly develop Covid-19 vaccines, resigned on Friday.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Marks is stepping down amid pressure from the Trump administration and as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reshapes federal public health agencies and is poised to eliminate 10,000 employees, with the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expected to suffer a loss of 20 percent of their staff members.
“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 in his resignation letter. “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.” Marks submitted his resignation after a department official gave him the option to resign or be fired, sources told WSJ.
The news arrives amid an alarming outbreak of the measles in the U.S. As of Friday, Texas reported 400 cases associated with the outbreak, New Mexico reported 44, and Oklahoma reported nine, per CNN.
When speaking to The Washington Post, Marks discussed his concern over the outbreak in Texas, which “reminds us of what happens when confidence in well-established science underlying public health and well-being is undermined.”
Kennedy has long been an outspoken criticism of vaccines, which he has falsely linked to autism, and previously petitioned the FDA to revoke authorization for life-saving Covid-19 vaccines. During the pandemic, he compared public health measures to the Nazi Holocaust and falsely claimed that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack caucasians and Black people.”
In February, Kennedy brushed off the severity of a measles outbreak in South Texas, that saw the first death attributed to the deadly virus in the U.S. since 2015. The Health Secretary has also heavily touted treating the measles with vitamin A, while downplaying the use of vaccines.
When speaking to the Post, Marks said, “It is unconscionable with measles outbreaks to not have a full-throated endorsement of measles vaccinations.”
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