FDA’s Top Vaccine Scientist, Dramatically Resigns & Blames HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Peter Marks played a significant role in expediting the approval of the Pfizer vaccine’s Biologics License Application, which was necessary for implementing Biden’s insidious vaccine mandate.
We are about 70 days into President Donald Trump’s second term, and the seismic staffing shakeups throughout the Great Bureaucracy continue.
Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has resigned, citing significant disagreements with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policies.
Marks, who served as the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research since 2016, dramatically announced his resignation in a letter to Acting FDA Commissioner Sara Brenner, stating it would take effect on April 5.
Marks blamed Kennedy for his departure, essentially smearing the new HHS Secretary on the way out of the door.
Peter Marks offered his letter of resignation to Health and Human Services (HHS) officials on Friday, after being given a choice between resigning or being fired.
“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Mr Marks wrote in a resignation letter, obtained by multiple US media outlets, referring to the agency’s new leader Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Now, there is a lot to unpack with this incident. In November, the American people voted for President Donald Trump, whose platform included Kennedy’s vision for more vaccine testing and less reliance on vaccines as a cure-all.
Marks had a choice: Adopt the new strategy or leave. He chose to leave.
Kennedy, who in his years as an anti-vaccine activist criticized measles shots and boosted vitamin A as a treatment, is now using his government position to tout the vitamin’s accepted benefits. He has also said that receiving the measles vaccine should be a personal choice. Experts acknowledge that vitamin A can be beneficial after someone has become sickened, but they say it is not a replacement for vaccination to prevent measles.
“It is unconscionable with measles outbreaks to not have a full-throated endorsement of measles vaccinations,” Marks told The Post.
The FDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Department of Health and Human Services official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said that Marks did not have a “place at FDA” if he did not buy into Kennedy’s vision for the agency.
Leaving is a valid choice, and we will see if Kennedy’s approach is better than Marks’ vision.
I will simply note that Marks played a critical role in the development and authorization of COVID vaccines during the pandemic. As the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) since 2016, Marks led vaccine-related efforts, including “Operation Warp Speed,” a Trump administration initiative that accelerated vaccine development by allocating $18 billion to expedite production while maintaining safety and efficacy standards.
While that may have initially been a sound game plan, Marks bitterly clung to the vaccine-oriented approach, even as the vaccinated got “break-through” cases and concerns arose about side effects.
Marks played a significant role in expediting the approval of the Pfizer vaccine’s Biologics License Application (BLA), which was necessary for implementing Biden’s insidious vaccine mandate. This process faced criticism for allegedly sidelining dissenting experts and prioritizing speed over thorough evaluation.
The impact of these decisions has led to a steady decline in the trust the public has in its health agencies.
- Trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fell from 66% in June 2023 to 61% in early 2025.
- Trust in the FDA declined from 65% to 53%, and trust in state/local public health officials decreased from 64% to 54% during the same period.
And while the American press is twisting their reports to make it appear Marks is nobly falling on his sword because of sacred science, many Americans are rejoicing at the news.
RFK Jr. promised to remove top level service workers at the FDA when President Trump won the election.
Today, he forced out the FDA’s top vaccine official.
Promises made, promises kept!
— Ian Jaeger (@IanJaeger29) March 29, 2025
Finally, I have a DOGE Update for the agencies overseen by Kennedy. Under the current restructuring plan, approximately 1,200 employees have been fired from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). These layoffs are part of broader cuts across HHS, which aim to reduce its workforce by 10,000 positions, consolidating divisions and halving regional offices.
The best news: there are still over 1300 days left in the current Trump term. I intend to enjoy them all, especially the resignations and firings of those who seek to undermine what I voted for.
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Comments
Good, we’ve already seen the incompetence of the FDA on full display during Covid when all they did was lie every single day. I hope they all quit, they’re a waste of money.
And yet
“Trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fell from 66% in June 2023 to 61% in early 2025”
5%?
That’s insanely high % of people that have confidence in the agency
The CDC provided links to approx 60 studies showing that masking worked to reduce the spread of covid. I was sufficiently familiar with approx 11 of those studies and had performed a reasonable level of due diligence of approx 4 of the studies. all of those studies had serious flaws that should have discredited the studies with any honest researcher, yet the CDC continued to promote the flawed studies in spite of obvious problems.
Of particular note is the Kansas mask study.
The kansas masked mandate vs non mask mandated counties that was released in the fall of 2020 which the KU provided me with the detailed excel file of their data. The study artificially cut the study period short when the gap in the infection rates of mandated mask counties started to exceed the infection rates of the non mask mandated counties. The infection rates remained higher in the mandated mask counties through at least late 2022.
I had sent two emails back to the individuals who provided me with the excel file to ask if they were going to update the study period. not surprisingly, I got no response since they knew their study conclusions were no longer valid.
The point is that the CDC and most everyone else associated with the studies at the CDC knew their list of mask studies included several fraudulent studies.
In this case, was it incompetence or a profit motive. There should be an in depth investigation.
Every self-deportation is a victory.
“I will simply note that Marks played a critical role in the development and authorization of COVID vaccines during the pandemic.”
“Vaccines” that were effective neither in preventing infection nor transmission. I wouldn’t make this the lede on my résumé.
Lecture us some more about “transparency,” bunghole.
I bet they have differences on vaccines. RFK thinks they should actually, y’know, work and be vaccines. This loser didn’t. Good riddance.
Bureaucrats who know only how to change dictionaries to achieve their assigned goals ought to move over to the Department of Education.
I agree that the vaccines should actually work which most respiratory vaccines are known to be very ineffective.
The qualms I have with Kennedy, is some of his other ideas are pure junk such as the vaccines cause autism.
It is entirely possible that the administration of multiple vaccines in combination doses in young developing bodies is generating very deleterious effects. Peter McCullough has outlined the questionable benefits to children in the absence of risk stratification and the known explosive cases of autism which have risen in parallel with the bundling of additional vaccines throughout the years since the first ones were developed. The idea is far from being “pure junk.”
My daughter, who is a nurse practitioner, mentiones two items for the increase in autism Dx. Apparently, an older father is a known risk factor. That has obviously been happening. Also, putting a child into the “autism-industrial-complex” means bucks, Just look at the money in gender identity.
A well known correlation with increases autism is the age of the parents ( not sure if it’s the age of the father of mother or both)
Yet that factor is ignored by advocates
Exactly. “Autism” is now being overdiagnosed, to the point where social awkwardness is being treated as being “on the spectrum.” (Bleh, if I hear that phrase again…) In my previous job I had arguments with more than classroom teacher who claimed that a student was autistic when they were just smart and awkward. Like many cases of ADHD it’s a medical diagnosis of ordinary human imperfections.
And your proof that vaccines don’t cause autism?
Marks is on shaky ground with his departure comment. Trust will have to be earned.
Such a dramatic exit. Speaking of misinformation; Marks needs to look in a mirror. He seems to have an unusual dependence on “the science”.
Its the $cience™.
FIFY.
“Marks played a significant role in expediting the approval of the Pfizer vaccine’s Biologics License Application (BLA), which was necessary for implementing Biden’s insidious vaccine mandate.”
In a just world, Marks, et al, would already be in GitMo awaiting his just punishment for crimes against humanity.
He didn’t do such a hot job at FDA. He forced through approval of one product despite it not meeting its primary outcomes in its registration trial(s). That means the drug essentially didn’t work. Why he forced the approval, nobody knows. As a physician, I am glad Marks is gone. We don’t need FDA regulators who ignore the safety and efficacy rules just because … —we need FDA regulators who follow the law and medical standards.
Regarding the measles vaxx, just gonna drop this here for food for thought:
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/texas-gave-15000-more-mmr-shots-year-now-it-has-more-measles-cases-entire-us-had-2024
Interesting. Gaines County is nowhere near the border…
Gaines county has a significant population of Mennonites, which would make the population more susceptible. Illegals who cross the border, don’t stay at the border. They may get a significant number of people who crossed over in New Mexico and are heading for the Fort Worth, Dallas areas.
Mark’s BS is from Columbia. Having said that it looks like he was a real doctor and researcher before going into government service. Something about government service must be corrupting.
One additional thought on corruption of government service. Essential to science is skepticism and appropriate peer preview. When those are absent science withers and takes on the trappings of religion. Climate science is a prime example. It is “settled science” (what nonsense) absent peer review and any skepticism behaving as a religious cult complete with saints and clergy. Transgenderism and the Covid response travelled along the same path but did not quite reach the insanity of climate science primarily because there was more effective pushback.
On the contrary, the problem with “climate science” is that everything is peer reviewed, which means it needs to be signed off on by the same small cabal of “peers”. That was what we discovered with the East Anglia leak. The “climate science” community at the time was quite a small group, and they refused to pass any paper that didn’t agree with them.
Or the competence bar is lower.
Bureaucratic or management time takes away from science time. Not only time in the lab which can continue to root you in reality but time reading studies and just pondering the science, Your priorities all change from the science to fighting bureaucratic and funding battles and turf wars.
I saw article elsewhere that indicated Mark’s was given the choice of resigning or being fired. To me, that’s being fired. Fired with a fig leaf is still fired.
As an infectious diseases doc, the forced resignation of Peter Marks is a positive. Marks’ childish swipe at Kennedy was not wholly unexpected, as he has a reputation for being a vindictive and petty tyrant.
Keep in mind Mark’s track record: he pushed the approval of COVID booster vaccines under EUA with no randomized data demonstrating clinical efficacy (just a boost in antibody levels). He pushed COVID vaccines for children as young as 6 months with data that is at best forced. He rushed the FDA approval of the COVID vaccines so that they could be mandated (which helped destroy all trust in regulatory agencies). Truth and transparency were NOT hallmarks of his leadership.
‘New brooms sweep clean’ is what my Grandfather told me.
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