WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� Dr. Vinay Prasad, a prominent critic of the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration, has been named to oversee the agency鈥檚 program for vaccines and biotech drugs.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced the appointment Tuesday in a message to agency staff, praising Prasad's 鈥渓ong and distinguished history in medicine.鈥�
Prasad is the latest in a and critics of COVID-19 measures to join the federal government under President Donald Trump.
Unlike political roles such as FDA commissioner, the job Prasad is stepping into has traditionally been held by an FDA career scientist. His appointment raises new questions about whether vaccines and other new therapies will face unnecessary scrutiny from regulators.
Prasad replaces Dr. Peter Marks, FDA鈥檚 longtime vaccine chief after clashing with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over
In a social media post, Prasad likened Marks to 鈥渁 bobblehead doll that just stamps approval."
Last year, he told former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that Americans would probably be better off without the FDA in its current form.
鈥淚f you鈥檙e talking about FDA 2024, I think they鈥檇 probably be better off as a result of not having the FDA鈥� Prasad said during an appearance on Ramaswamy's podcast.
A professor at the University of California San Francisco, Prasad's medical training is in cancer and blood disorders. He first came to prominence among academics more than a decade ago for a series of papers behind new cancer therapies.
Research by Prasad and his colleagues showed that many cancer drugs fast-tracked by the FDA have never been shown to improve or extend patient lives. Instead, the drugs are often approved based on alternate measures, such as the ability to shrink tumors, which are thought to predict long-term survival in patients.
The FDA has long defended this practice as a way of accelerating approval of medicines for gravely ill patients.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Prasad reached a much broader audience as a critic of vaccine and mask mandates, lockdowns and moves to speed the availability of booster shots from Pfizer and Moderna. Many of his views mirror those of other Trump appointees, including Makary and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.
In 2022, Prasad and Makary were co-authors on a paper attacking the recommendation for , particularly boys and young men. Those patients received because showed a higher rate of , a rare form of heart inflammation that is usually mild.
The paper concluded that requiring booster shots in young people would cause more injury than benefit. None of the authors specialized in studying infectious diseases or vaccine reactions, prompting pushback from many health experts.
Angela Rasmussen, a virus expert at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said Tuesday's announcement 鈥渂odes extremely poorly for vaccine approvals in the U.S.鈥�
鈥淭his decision will invariably result in decreased vaccine access for the public, less transparency, and fewer approvals,鈥� Rasmussen wrote in an email.
In recent years, Prasad become a regular on podcasts associated with Kennedy鈥檚 鈥淢ake America Healthy Again鈥� movement, which often portrays the FDA as beholden to the pharmaceutical industry.
Prasad's appointment is likely to rattle drug and vaccine makers, who depend on the predictability of FDA standards and procedures to guide drug development plans that can span years or even decades.
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Associated Press writer JoNel Aleccia contributed to this story.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute鈥檚 Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Matthew Perrone, The Associated Press
