Former senior vaccine official at Food and Drug Administration criticized the Secretary of Health and Social Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. To minimize the death of unvaccinated children in measles, in the middle of this year Epidemic record virus.
“To reject the deaths of children due to infectious diseases which are avoidable by vaccines as expected or not a big problem, which is simply not acceptable to me,” said Dr. Peter Marks, in an interview broadcast on Sunday on “Face The Nation with Margaret Brennan”.
The weekly cases of measles have climbed to the highest levels Seen in the United States since a virus wave in 2019, which has been the worst for decades. Three deaths were linked to this year’s measles epidemic, including two unvaccinated children in Texas.
“We had three deaths in measles in this country for 20 years, and we are trying to refocus the press to pay them attention to the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said at a meeting of the White House.
Kennedy has also contrasted the number of American measles in Europe, where thousands of additional infections and dozens of deaths have been reported in recent months. Kennedy also used comparison as proof that his response to the epidemic was a success.
Marks criticized Kennedy’s comparison, noting that Europe figures “include Romania, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, other places that have less robust public health efforts than us.” He also said that “even a unique death in this measles country, it’s right – it’s not excusable.”
“It is simply not the right thing to do. We should compare our response to measles now to what we accomplished during the first two decades of the 20th century, to the 2019 measles epidemic, that is to say that we should not have a death of measles,” said Marks.
Changes at the FDA
Before it is ousted By Kennedy aid, Marks was the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research of the FDA, which regulates vaccines and other medical products derived from living sources. He was also the architect of the Operation Warp speed effort to accelerate the development of COVVI-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
He warned that he was now “difficult in this environment” for some of his former colleagues in the federal government to approve vaccines.
“There are a whole series of people who cannot speak as I say, you know, it is a vaccine for which the advantages prevail so much on the risks,” said Marks.
A few days after Marks submitted his letter of resignation, Kennedy implemented Strong dismissals And forced resignations through the FDA, as part of a radical restructuring of the country’s health agencies.
The cuts forced federal health officials to face difficult decisions, especially How to prioritize Fewer inspections on food safety and drugs. Marks welcomed the remaining staff of the agency as “public health heroes” who “struggle because there is a lot to do”.
“They keep an eye on the infections. They make sure that the vaccines arriving for approvals could make their way. They ensure that epidemics are studied. These people continue to do their work as best they can,” said Marks.
Marks said the delay in an approval decision on the COVVI-19 vaccine in Novavax, which was to be clear earlier this month by the FDA, was worrying. And he warned that his own eviction could point out a change as the agency approaches to vaccines.
“Why would you start to underline something that is so basic for public health,” said Marks.
“Do not do a service to pseudoscience”
Marks said he had never interacted directly with Kennedy as secretary. He also said that he did not know much about administration’s efforts to reopen research on theory that is on the theory of several times according to which vaccines cause autism, in the midst of wider plans to determine the cause of autism.
Asked about Kennedy’s assertion that “we know that it is an environmental toxin” provoking autism, Marks said that he was “very rare that scientists speak in absolute”. Kennedy has been criticized for years advertisement That vaccines cause autism, among a range of unfounded claims which he adopted about the danger posed by vaccinations.
“Most of the things are not so in black and white, and we are not talking about absolute. While pseudoscientists find it very easy to speak in absolute because they do not seek to use science in favor of humanity, they generally use science for their own advantage,” he said.
Marks said that he knew the previous work of Dr. Mark Geier and his son, David Geier, whom the Washington Post reported was charged by Kennedy this year to revisit a preceding Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Study on Vaccines and Autism.
“They have a firm and fixed idea that vaccines cause autism. It is therefore very difficult for me to see how we will get to any other idea that vaccines do not cause autism,” said Marks.
Describe the work of Geier and his father as a pseudoscience “is a bad service to pseudoscience,” said Marks.
David Geier was a fine by a fine by Maryland regulators to practice licensed medicine, including for prescribing Lupron medication for autistic children. Lupron is also used as a chemical castration medication for sex offenders.
“I don’t know. I can’t even conceive as a doctor of the way he thought it could be a good idea,” said Marks.