STAT+: It’s RFK Jr.’s FDA now
Why the ouster of Peter Marks, a senior FDA official, is a huge deal, whether you liked him or not.
The forced resignation of Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration official in charge of regulating vaccines, gene therapies, and the blood supply, led to panic over the weekend in the worlds of public health and biopharmaceuticals — two worlds that often agree on very little aside from their belief in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
There were also some dissenters: those who argued one person is simply not important enough to raise concerns this big. Besides, they said, Marks made mistakes that were significant enough to justify firing him.
That counterargument is wrong. Even if Marks were inconsequential or incompetent, his removal matters a great deal.
