Better in their words…

Dr. Vinay Prasad resigned late Tuesday from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) top vaccine post.

Andrew Nixon, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesman, confirmed Prasad’s resignation Tuesday evening to The New York Times, stating that “Prasad did not want to be a distraction to the great work of the F.D.A. in the Trump administration and has decided to return to California and spend more time with his family.”

Nixon added, “We thank him for his service and the many important reforms he was able to achieve in his time at F.D.A.”

The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported that Prasad “was ousted amid conservative criticism.”

As of press time today, Prasad had not commented publicly on the reasons for his departure.

In May, Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist who opposed COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children while supporting other vaccines for kids, replaced Dr. Peter Marks as the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the federal agency that oversees vaccine approval.

Last month, he became the FDA’s chief medical and scientific officer.

When Prasad joined the FDA, Pfizer and Moderna stocks dropped. So did stocks of smaller gene therapy companies, such as Sarepta Therapeutics.

Analysts today said Prasad’s departure was a “net positive” for the biotech sector, Reuters reported.

Children’s Health Defense CEO Mary Holland said that in the “rough-and-tumble world of DC politics, it’s hard to decipher how and why Dr. Prasad was forced out. Did Big Pharma trigger the fall? Ideological foes? Infighting at FDA? Some combination of the above? It’s not clear that we will ever know the details.”

What’s important now is that a well-qualified scientist quickly replaces Prasad, Holland said. “What matters is that the new candidate has an unwavering commitment to honest science and government — not who they may have voted for in elections in years gone by.”

George Tidmarsh, M.D., Ph.D., who earlier this month joined the FDA to direct its Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, will temporarily direct CBER until HHS names a long-term replacement.

Controversy and criticism swirled in days leading up to resignation

News reports of Prasad’s resignation highlight several possible reasons he may have stepped down.

Prasad was recently targeted by Laura Loomer, whom the Times described as a “right-wing influencer” who led a “public campaign” against Prasad. She attacked Prasad in a July 20 post on her website, “Meet Vinay Prasad: The Progressive Leftist Saboteur Undermining President Trump’s FDA.”

In a July 21 post on X, in which she said Prasad “must be fired now,” Loomer spliced bits of comments Prasad had made in the past that appeared to align him with Democrats.

On July 27, The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed, “Vinay Prasad Is a Bernie Sanders Acolyte in MAHA Drag,” which claimed Prasad “doesn’t think patients can be trusted to make their own healthcare decisions.”

“When he saw some of these sort of smear pieces, he didn’t want to be a distraction,” said FDA Commissioner Marty Makary today in an interview with CNBC.

In an interview published last weekend, Makary told Politico, “There’s not a political bone” in Prasad’s body. “He’s an impeccable scientist, I think one of the greatest scientific minds of our generation.”

Also this month, Prasad faced “escalating tensions and blowback” from Sarepta Therapeutics, which sells the drug Elevidys to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy, an incurable muscle condition.

Prasad had “railed against” the decision to approve the drug, arguing the evidence showing it stopped or reversed symptoms was weak, according to CNN.

On July 18, the FDA asked Sarepta to halt shipments of the drug after three patients who took the drug died. But in a sudden reversal yesterday, the FDA allowed Sarepta to resume shipments for patients who can walk, causing the company’s stock to soar.

A history of ‘contrarian’ views, especially on COVID mask mandates, vaccines

Before his time at the FDA, Prasad was a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, where he was outspoken on social media outlets, including YouTube, Substack and X, about his views on scientific research and public health policies.

Mainstream media outlets, including The Associated Press and The Seattle Times, referred to his views as “contrarian.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Prasad publicly opposed masking toddlers and voiced concerns about myocarditis risks for young men who received mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

While at the FDA, he and Makary limited approvals for updated COVID-19 vaccines to people over age 65 and people with one or more health conditions that put them at high risk for the virus.

However, Prasad and Makary’s framework, which they outlined in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, did not completely take COVID-19 shots off the table for healthy people between the ages of 6 months and 64 years.

Instead, it required vaccine makers to conduct randomized clinical trials that have clinical outcomes — preventing symptomatic COVID-19, hospitalization or death — on the drugs before the FDA will sign off on the vaccines.