The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday named Dr. Vinay Prasad — a hematologist-oncologist who has been accused of spreading misinformation about Covid vaccines and was an outspoken critic of the agency’s decision to approve Covid shots in children — as its new vaccine chief.
The FDA commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, announced Prasad would lead the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research to agency employees earlier Tuesday and later on X.
Makary called the appointment “a significant step forward,” saying Prasad would bring “scientific rigor, independence, and transparency.”
Prasad comes from the University of California, San Francisco, where he most recently was a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics. He is a practicing physician, according to his website.
He spent much of the pandemic criticizing the FDA’s and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s response to the virus.
In a 2021 blog post and an accompanying video, Prasad suggested the national response to Covid might bring on the collapse of democracy, invoking the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich in Germany.
On the blog that year, Prasad downplayed the anti-vaccine activism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — now the secretary of health and human services — specifically his role in a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
On Bari Weiss’ contrarian website, The Free Press, Prasad seemed to defend Kennedy’s most controversial positions on vaccines, raw milk and fluoride by listing other countries that have policies that align with Kennedy’s views.
Prasad has also been an outspoken critic of Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s former vaccine chief, saying on Twitter, now X, in 2022 that Marks “might be the worst FDA regulator in modern history” after the approval of Covid boosters in children. Last year, he called on Marks to be fired “ASAP,” claiming the FDA approved boosters for kids who had already had Covid with “no data.” The agency approved the boosters based on blood samples and safety data from other versions of the vaccines.
Prasad has also advocated for randomized placebo-controlled trials for the Covid vaccines every year — a position the FDA, in the Trump administration, now appears to support.
Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, noted that some of Prasad’s views — including that healthy children and other low-risk groups may not need additional Covid vaccinations — are more widely accepted in the scientific community now.
However, Prasad’s criticism of the health agencies’ response during the pandemic is unfair, he said.
“If we had the luxury of knowing then what we know now, we would do it differently,” Creech said. “But my goodness, the world was on fire, and we were doing our best.”
Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who has been a critic of Kennedy, said Prasad’s past comments are “dangerous” and “irresponsible,” noting that 1,800 children have died from Covid and hundreds of thousands have been hospitalized. The center, a member of the World Health Organization’s vaccine safety program, provides information about vaccines to parents.
“Does he think Covid doesn’t hurt children?” Offit said. “It makes me think he never spent a minute in a children’s hospital.”
Offit also questioned whether Prasad was fit for the role as an oncologist and hematologist. As head of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Prasad would also oversee a number of other medical products, including gene therapies.
“He has no experience at all in vaccine research or design or development of testing,” Offit said. He added that most people in the role do have such experience — although Marks, the former vaccine chief, was also criticized for having a background in oncology and hematology.
Prasad didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In late March, Kennedy forced Marks out of his position.
Marks wrote in his resignation letter that undermining confidence in vaccines is “irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety, and security.”
According to a poll published Tuesday by KFF, a health policy research group, less than half of Americans say they have confidence in the Trump administration’s health agencies, including the FDA, to protect against outbreak of infectious diseases and ensure the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs and vaccines, among their other responsibilities. The poll, which was conducted last month, found that most adults say they are at least “somewhat confident” in the safety of many routine vaccines, including those for measles and the flu.
After the announcement, a group of biotech stocks, including vaccine makers, fell more than 6%, suggesting investors didn’t have a favorable view of what Prasad could do in the role.
