Ousted Vaccine Chief Says RFK Jr.ās Team Sought Data to Justify Anti-Science Stance
Peter Marks says the new health secretaryās team wants to show vaccines arenāt safe while promoting dangerous and unproven treatments
By
Liz Essley Whyte
April 4, 2025 2:02 pm ET
Dr. Peter Marks Photo: Stephen Voss for WSJ
The
top vaccine regulator ousted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the health secretaryās team has sought nonexistent data to justify antivaccine narratives and pushed to water down regulation of unproven stem-cell treatments.
āI can never give allegiance to anyone else other than to follow the science as we see it,ā said Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration official. āThat does not mean that I can just roll over and take conspiracy theories and justify them.ā
Marks, who is leaving his FDA post on Saturday after he was offered the choice to resign or be fired, described Kennedyās tenure to date as āvery scaryā in an interview with The Wall Street Journal Friday.
The outgoing official said he was speaking out to encourage parents to vaccinate their children against measles, as
cases mount in Texas and New Mexico. He urged the Trump administration to give a full-throated endorsement of the measles vaccine because it can prevent deaths and recommended a vaccination campaign.
An HHS spokesman didnāt immediately respond to requests for comment. Kennedy has said he wants the federal government to step up its work fighting chronic disease. He has said he isnāt antivaccine, told senators he would follow the science and called stopping the measles outbreak a ātop priority.ā
His departure furthers Kennedyās remaking of the federal governmentās health bureaucracy and handling of vaccines. Early this week, the Trump administration began laying off thousands of U.S. health staffers and eliminating divisions.
The outgoing FDA official said he had been speaking out and encouraging parents to vaccinate their children against measles as cases mount in Texas, where a child is shown getting an MMR vaccine. Photo: Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images
Kennedy has also hired a researcher beloved by antivaccine activists to study a possible link between vaccines and autismāa link that other studies have concluded doesnāt exist.
Marks said he had been willing to work with Kennedy on streamlining the FDA, but Kennedyās reorganization had weakened his office.
He expressed concern that the new secretaryās efforts could chill private investment in medical research in the U.S. and leave the U.S. less prepared to fight biological weapons while allowing other countries to take the lead developing cutting-edge treatments for diseases.
āThey broke something without real plans to fix it, because the people who were doing the breaking didnāt have any idea,ā he said. āThey took the place apart without having an instruction manual of how to put it back together.ā
Marks oversaw the FDA department that evaluated whether immunizationsāas well as biotech drugs for cancer and other diseasesāworked safely and should go into use. In the first Trump administration, he was central to setting up the Operation Warp Speed effort to speed development of Covid-19 vaccines. A Star Trek fan, he helped name the effort.
His expertise and steady hand was prized by the pharmaceutical industry, which has been concerned about Kennedyās antivaccine rhetoric and had urged the White House to keep Marks.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has hired a researcher beloved by antivaccine activists to study a possible link between vaccines and autism. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Marks said he didnāt want to leave and sought to collaborate with Kennedy. Marks sent a memo to the FDAās acting commissioner early in the new health secretaryās tenure that proposed listening sessions on vaccines and making immunization information clearer for parents and doctors.
In early March, Marks said, Kennedyās team requested that Marks turn over data on cases of brain swelling and deaths caused by the measles vaccineādata that Marks said doesnāt exist because there have been no such confirmed cases in the U.S.
āI can only come to a single conclusion that there was not an appreciation for having somebody who was rigorously science-driven within the organization,ā Marks said.
An HHS official earlier said that Marks had no place at FDA if he did ānot want to get behind restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency.ā
Marks said Kennedyās team was also interested in weakening regulation of unproven stem-cell treatments, which clinics and websites sell for diseases ranging from Alzheimerās to arthritis. He met with top HHS officials to discuss the issue, he said, and offered to meet them halfway by proposing a new set of regulations that would keep rules vigorous for risky treatments but more lenient for less risky therapies.
āWhat they are trying to do is potentially dangerous,ā he said. āThese stem cells, if they are made improperly, they can harm people.ā
Marks lacked support among people close to President Trump and Kennedy. Some Trump advisers pushed the unproven notion that Marks had helped slow the authorization of the Covid-19 vaccine from
Pfizer and
BioNTech until after the 2020 election, people familiar with the matter said.
Marks said his decision to require two months of safety data for the Covid-19 vaccine authorizations was based on a desire to protect public health, not politics. āI am leaving this job knowing that I always did my best to use the science to do what is right for the American public,ā he said.
Marks has been a target of antivaccine groups who asserted that the FDA official rushed the authorizations for the Covid-19 vaccines. Kennedy led or worked with some of the groups. He had long intended to get rid of Marks, people familiar with the matter said.
A nurse, as seen in 2021, handles Moderna Covid-19 vaccines ready to be administered. Photo: Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images
āHe represents everything that is wrong with the regulatory agencies in our government,ā said Del Bigtree, Kennedyās former communications chief on his presidential campaign who also leads a nonprofit that criticizes vaccines.
New FDA Commissioner Marty Makary supported the decision to topple Marks, people familiar with the matter said.
Makary criticized Marks
in a 2023 social-media post for spreading āmisinformationā about Covid-19 boosters. Makary also took issue with Marks authorizing Covid-19 boosters for a broad population despite two of his deputies arguing for limiting booster use until more people in the developing world could get vaccinated.
In addition, Makary disagreed with Marksās decision to override FDA staff scientists and approve a Duchenne muscular dystrophy treatment from
Sarepta Therapeutics, people familiar with the matter said. Last month Sarepta said that a patient suffered acute liver failure and died after taking the companyās gene therapy.
Marks said the boosters saved lives and the Sarepta treatment proved effective.
On Tuesday, in the first major vaccine decision following Marksā submission of his resignation, the FDA
sat on a vaccine application its staff scientists had been poised to approve, missing a key deadline. Makary was involved in the decision to hold off on the approval, a person familiar with the matter said.
Marks said he would have resigned after the FDA missed the deadline for the approval decision, if he hadnāt already submitted his resignation. āThe politicals shouldnāt have been involved in this,ā he said, referring to political appointees to FDA. āThere was no controversy. The review staff agreed it was an approval.ā
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Wild West out here
Measles, Polio, and all the viruses we thought we had in check about to make a comeback God Bless America.
