The former top vaccines official at the Food and Drug Administration chastised Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for downplaying the deaths of unvaccinated children from measles during this year’s record outbreak of the virus.
“To dismiss children’s deaths due to infectious diseases that are preventable by vaccines as just expected or not a big deal, that’s just not acceptable to me,” said Dr. Peter Marks in an interview airing Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Weekly measles cases have reached their highest level in the United States since a 2019 virus outbreak, which was the worst in decades. This year’s measles outbreak has been linked to three deaths, two of which were unvaccinated children in Texas.
“We’ve had three measles deaths in this country over the last 20 years, and we’re trying to refocus the press to get them to pay attention to the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said Thursday at a White House Cabinet meeting.
Kennedy also contrasted measles case numbers in the United States with those in Europe, where thousands more infections and dozens of deaths have been reported in recent months. Kennedy has also used the comparison to demonstrate that his response to the outbreak was successful.
Marks criticized Kennedy’s comparison, noting that Europe’s figures “includes Romania, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and other places that have less robust public health efforts than we do.” He went on to state that “even a single death in this country from measles, it’s just— it’s just not excusable.”
“That’s simply not the right thing to do. We should be comparing our measles response now to what we accomplished in the first two decades of the twentieth century, prior to the 2019 measles outbreak, which was that there should be no deaths from measles,” Marks said.
Changes at the FDA
Before being removed by Kennedy’s aides, Marks was the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which oversees vaccines and other medical products derived from living sources. He also spearheaded the Operation Warp Speed initiative to accelerate the development of COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
He cautioned that it is now “challenging in this environment” for some of his former colleagues in the federal government to support vaccination.
“There’s a whole host of people who can’t speak out like I am that are saying, you know, this is a vaccine for which the benefits so greatly outweigh the risks,” Marks told the audience.
Days after Marks submitted his resignation letter, Kennedy implemented deep cuts and forced resignations across the FDA as part of a massive restructuring of the country’s health agencies.
The cuts forced federal health officials to make difficult decisions, such as how to prioritize fewer food and drug safety inspections. Marks described the agency’s remaining employees as “heroes in public health” who are “struggling because there’s a lot to be done.”
“They keep track of the infections. They ensure that vaccines submitted for approval make it through. They ensure that outbreaks are investigated. “Those people are continuing to do their jobs as best they can,” Marks stated.
Marks expressed concern about the delay in the FDA’s approval decision for Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine, which was expected earlier this month. And he warned that his own removal could signal a shift in the agency’s approach to vaccines.
“Why would you de-emphasize something that is so basic to public health,” Mr. Marks asked.
“Does a disservice to pseudoscience”
Marks stated that he never interacted directly with Kennedy while serving as secretary. He also said he knew little about the administration’s efforts to reopen research into the repeatedly debunked theory that vaccines cause autism, as part of larger plans to determine the cause of autism.
When asked about Kennedy’s assertion that “we know it is an environmental toxin” that causes autism, Marks said it was “very rare for scientists to speak in absolutes.” Kennedy has been chastised for years for claiming that vaccines cause autism, one of several unfounded claims he has made about the dangers of immunizations.
“Most things are not so black and white, and we don’t use absolutes. “Pseudoscientists find it very easy to speak in absolutes because they are not actually looking to use science for the benefit of mankind, but rather for their own benefit,” he said.
Marks said he was familiar with the work of Dr. Mark Geier and his son, David Geier, who, according to The Washington Post, was tasked by Kennedy this year with revisiting a previous Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine and autism study.
“They have a firm and fixed belief that vaccines cause autism. So it’s difficult for me to see how we’ll get anywhere other than the conclusion that vaccines cause autism,” Marks said.
Marks stated that referring to Geier and his father’s work as pseudoscience does a disservice to pseudoscience.
Maryland regulators fined David Geier for practicing medicine without a license, which included prescribing Lupron to autistic children. Lupron is also used as a chemical castration treatment for sex offenders.
“I do not know. As a physician, I can’t imagine why he thought that was a good idea,” Marks said.