WASHINGTON — Dr. Vinay Prasad, a prominent critic of the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration, has been named to oversee the health agency’s program for vaccines and biotech drugs.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced the appointment Tuesday in a message to agency staff, praising Prasad’s “long and distinguished history in medicine.”
Prasad is the latest in a series of medical contrarians 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’s longtime vaccine chief who resigned in March after clashing with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over concerns about the safety of vaccinations.
In a social media post, Prasad likened Marks to “a 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.
“If you’re talking about FDA 2024, I think they’d probably be better off as a result of not having the FDA” 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 for a series of papers scrutinizing the evidence behind new cancer therapies.
Research by Prasad and his colleagues showed that many cancer drugs fast-tracked by the FDA have never be