The new vaccine chief of the Food and Drug Administration is, perhaps not surprisingly, a doctor well-known for his skepticism about at least one vaccine. Dr. Vinay Prasad is a hematologist-oncologist who spoke out against the response to the COVID pandemic by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggesting the reaction to the pandemic could cause democracy to collapse and comparing the situation to Hitler's rise in Germany, NBC News reports. He's also defended controversial positions held by President Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including Kennedy's skepticism on vaccines. He himself previously denounced the FDA's decision to grant emergency use authorization for COVID booster shots, criticized vaccine mandates, and called for Moderna's vaccine to be barred from use in men under 40, CBS News reports.
Prasad is replacing Dr. Peter Marks as the director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which has not had an acting director since Marks was forced out in March. Prasad has had a lot of negative feedback for Marks over the years, calling him "one of the most dangerous, pro-pharma regulators of the 21st century." But Prasad has been accused of spreading misinformation regarding COVID vaccines, and now he'll be a part of the FDA's upcoming decision on whether to approve annual updates to those vaccines this fall. He has said in the past that new randomized trials should be carried out before any updated shots are approved. (More vaccines stories.)
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