Watch: Purged by RFK Jr., Covid Vaccine Hero Dr. Peter Marks Fears Health Policy "Nihilism" Will Cost Many Lives

He was celebrated as an architect of Operation Warp Speed during Trump's first administration. Now he's been forced out amid the ideological dismantling of science-based public health operations.

“Bodies in the street” is a stark metaphor that public health professionals use when they talk about the heart-breaking, real-life evidence that sometimes must emerge before political leaders enact science-based government policy changes.

Mass casualty events, from 19th century cholera outbreaks to the Covid-19 pandemic that began in 2020, historically have led to practical, public health responses and reforms, like urban sanitation systems and vaccine inoculations, that stemmed and staunched waves of preventable and unnecessary deaths.

Tragically, a new outbreak of such needless suffering may be all that halts the Trump Administration’s current dismantling of the U.S. public health infrastructure.

“We have a situation here where we’re bucking basic public health measures at our own risk,” said Dr. Peter Marks, one of the most authoritative and influential public health leaders in the nation.

“If people start to succumb around the country to vaccine-preventable illnesses, people may wake up to this, and that may be the wake up call,” he added.

“That’s the ‘bodies in the streets’ - whether it will be from measles, or whether it will be from multiple respiratory viruses that overwhelm our hospital system…or a new infectious threat. One of these things will likely wake people up out of their stupor to once again believe in the benefits of public health.”

A man of science. At a time when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is systematically pulling apart perhaps the foremost government health, medicine, and research infrastructure in the world, Newsmakers reached out to Dr. Marks in search of well-informed perspective about the practical impacts of MAGA public health policy-making.

A physician-scientist trained at blue chip universities and teaching hospitals as a hematologist-oncologist, he forged a distinguished public service career, leading for more than a decade the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

It was in that role that he came to public notice in 2020, as the architect of “Operation Warp Speed,” the all-government effort to support pharmaceutical companies that succeeded in developing a safe Covid vaccine in record time.

When Trump was re-elected last year and appointed vaccine conspiracist Kennedy to HHS, however, Marks’s deep scientific expertise and wide-ranging policy experience became liabilities. Just over two months into Trump’s new term, Kennedy gave Marks the choice to resign or be fired.

He didn’t go quietly.

The New York Times reported on his resignation letter*:

“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,” Dr. Marks wrote to Sara Brenner, the agency’s acting commissioner. He reiterated the sentiments in an interview, saying: “'This man doesn’t care about the truth. He cares about what is making him followers.”

…“Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at F.D.A. is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety and security,” Dr. Marks wrote.”

Drawing the curve, plotting the points. Dr. Marks zoomed into Newsmakers TV from Washington last week, for a conversation that ranged from vaccine policy, his political defenestration, and his work on the Covid shot to his sobering assessment of the dangers posted by Kennedy’s anti-vax crusade, the noxious role of social media in spreading false information, and his forecast of what it would take to repair the damage that already has been done to U.S. public health institutions.

“I loved the job that I was doing, and I would only leave it if forced or under incredible duress to do it,” he told us. “And that’s what occurred after it became clear that vaccines were going to be under relentless attack.”

“I was willing to try to do my best to accommodate questions about the safety of vaccines. I was willing to, if we need to further investigate autism and vaccines, even though I think the question has been answered, heck fine, happy to have a conversation about what we can do,” he added.

“But it became clear that the outcome had been predetermined and…as has become clear by (the removal of) others at other public health agencies who were taken out subsequently, anyone in the way of the conclusion that has been pre-determined has been taken out of the way,” he said. “This is a great example of drawing the curve before you plot the points.”

Kennedy not only has repeatedly peddled false claims linking vaccine to autism, spread false information about the safety of the Covid vaccine, and falsely portrayed current childhood vaccine schedules as dangerous, he has also taken apart independent boards and agencies that might challenge his opinions and beliefs, fired a number of professionals besides Marks who refused to rubber stamp his views and alarmed congressional members of both parties with his dismantling of public health agencies.

He’s also used false and misleading data to advance his anti-vaccine stances, slashed at least $500 million in research funding for important mRNA vaccine research and purged staff at the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For starters.

Asked to describe the nation’s public health landscape nine months into Kennedy’s reign at HHS, Dr. Marks cited serious problems, both short and long-term.

“I think we have two things that are going on at the same time,” he said. “First of all, there is a general state of confusion because…not many people know what actually they should be doing because there’s been so many confusing statements,” about vaccines.

“And the other thing is, we’re in a terrible state of preparedness because those who were most well-trained, be they at FDA, CDC, NIH, various public health agencies, are no longer in place to be able to respond to either natural or manmade threats.”

In response to a question, Dr. Marks waved off the suggestion that Kennedy’s move- fast-and-break-things approach to public health administration is driven by ideology, saying that “rather than even calling it politics, it’s just weird ideas.”

'“Secretary Kennedy wouldn’t speak to me directly this time up (although) I’ve spoken to him in the past before he was secretary,” he said. “He has very strong beliefs that vaccines cause problems and that natural immunity is preferable…The difference is that when you get natural immunity, you take the chances that the pathogen that you get natural immunity from could potentially kill you or do something bad to you, whereas vaccines by design are done to do this safely.”

“A lot of this has to do with, I think, very odd ways of thinking about benefit and risk,” he added. “And I actually think that this nihilism about benefits from products — you just deny that there could be any benefit, and then just think about all the risk - I have to speculate that is there some element of eugenics in this: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Is it that if you need a vaccine, you’re a weaker person? I mean, this is insane.”

Bottom line. Amid the daily drumbeat of distressing news about the latest harm inflicted on public health agencies, Dr. Marks said he remains sanguine that policies based on science, facts and judiciousness eventually will be restored to government.

At what cost is uncertain.

“To see the contempt for truth, to see the dismissal of honest inquiry, it’s just breathtaking,” he said. “And I think this will go down as a very shameful time in our history where, because some individuals were allowed to pursue their individual prejudices, quite contrary to facts or reality of the situation, we have actually had people who have been harmed.”

Does he have hope?

“Oh, I guess I do have hope. I do have hope,” he said. “And the reason why is the following: you can run, but you can’t hide.

“Eventually people will wake up, when infectious diseases knock on their door and they cause them harm, or their neighbor harm, or their friend harm, or their relative harm,” he added. “And eventually people will actually realize, I think, that public health actually will bring benefit. And we will see the cycle come around and people will care again. Whether it’s going to take two years, three years, five years, 10 years, I can’t promise you.

“But the hope is that eventually we will come back to balance and realize that these measures which have evolved over many centuries, actually will bring us benefit and we’ll cycle back to having them bring us the benefit.

“So I’m hopeful that it will get back to the right place it needs to. I am regretful or sorry that it’s going to actually probably take people being harmed to get us there.”

Check out our full conversation with Dr. Peter Marks via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. Our podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, or on Soundcloud here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weekday at 5 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.

Further reading

*Here is the text of the resignation letter Dr. Peter Marks submitted to Sara Brenner, Acting Director of the Food and Drug Administration, on March 28, 2025:

Dear Dr. Brenner:

It is with a heavy heart that I have decided to resign from FDA and retire from federal service as Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research effective April 5, 2025. I leave behind a staff of professionals who are undoubtedly the most devoted to protecting and promoting the public health of any group of people that I have encountered during my four decades working in the public and private sectors. I have always done my best to advocate for their well- being and I would ask that you do the same during this very difficult time during which their critical importance to the safety and security of our nation may be underappreciated.

Over the past years I have been involved in enhancing the safety of our nation’s blood supply, in advancing the field of cell and gene therapy, and in responding to public health emergencies. In the last of these, during the COVID- 19 pandemic I had the privilege of watching the vision that I conceived for Operation Warp Speed in March 2020 in collaboration with Dr. Robert Kadlec become a reality under the leadership of HHS Secretary Azar and President Trump due to the unwavering commitment of public servants at FDA and elsewhere across the government. At FDA, the tireless efforts of staff across the agency resulted in remarkably expediting the development of vaccines against the virus, meeting the standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness expected by the American public. The vaccines undoubtedly markedly reduced morbidity and mortality from COVID- 19 in the United States and elsewhere. Many of these same individuals applied learnings from the pandemic during a flawless response helping to facilitate the rapid control of the mpox epidemic in the United States during 2022. Individuals who participated in these responses remain at the ready to address the infectious threats that undoubtedly will confront us in the coming years, including H5N1 , which is now on our threshold.

Efforts currently being advanced by some on the adverse health effects of vaccination are concerning. The history of the potential individual and societal benefits of vaccination is as old as our great nation. George Washington considered protecting his troops in Cambridge, Massachusetts against smallpox early in the revolutionary war so that they would not be susceptible to infection by British troops infiltrating the ranks, and later in the war in February 1777 while encamped in Morristown, NJ, he went on to have the courage and foresight to sign an order requiring inoculation of his troops against smallpox. Subsequently, refinement of the smallpox vaccine combined with a widespread vaccination campaign resulted in the eradication of smallpox from the globe. The application of the remarkable scientific advances of Drs. Salk and Sabin’s vaccines led to the elimination of polio in the United States. And these are just effects of two of the vaccines that have been associated with saving millions of lives.

The ongoing multistate measles outbreak that is particularly severe in Texas reminds us of what happens when confidence in well -established science underlying public health and well-being is undermined. Measles, which killed more than 100,000 unvaccinated children last year in Africa and Asia owing to pneumonitis and encephalitis caused by the virus, had been eliminated from our shores. The two-dose measles, mumps, rubella vaccine regimen ( MMR ) using over the past decades has a remarkably favorable benefit-risk profile . The MMR vaccine is 97% or more effective in preventing measles following the two-dose series, and its safety has been remarkably well studied. Though rarely followed by a single fever-related seizure, or very rarely by allergic reactions or blood clotting disorders, the vaccine very simply does not cause autism, nor is it associated with encephalitis or death . It does, however, protect against a potential devastating consequence of prior measles infection, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), which is an untreatable, relentlessly progressive neurologic disorder leading to death in about 1 in 10,000 individuals infected with measles. Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at FDA is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety. and security.

In the years following the pandemic, at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research we have applied the same unwavering commitment to public health priorities to the development of cell and gene therapies to address both hereditary and acquired rare diseases. During my tenure as Center Director we have approved 22 gene therapies, including the first gene therapy ever to be approved in the United States. However, we know that we must do better to expedite the development of treatments for those individual suffering from any one ofthe thousands of diseases potentially addressable by the advances in molecular medicine over the past decades. Drawing from learnings of the pandemic, the staff at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research are implementing best practices learned during the pandemic such as increased communication with product developers to further expedite bringing needed treatments to those in need . They have also been exploring the dramatic transformation of our regulatory approach to expedite the delivery of directly administered genome editing products. If thoughtfully approached and further developed and refined, these treatments have the potential to transform human health over the coming years.

Over the past 13 years I have done my best to ensure that we efficiently and effectively applied the best available science to benefit public health . As you are aware, I was willing to work to address the Secretary’s concerns regarding vaccine safety and transparency by hearing from the public and implementing a variety of different public meetings and engagements with the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. However, 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..

My hope is that during the coming years, the unprecedented assault on scientific truth that has adversely impacted public health in our nation comes to an end so that the citizens of our country can fully benefit from the breadth of advances in medical science. Though I will regret not being able to be part of future work at the FDA, I am truly grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such a remarkable group of individuals as the staff at FDA and will do my best to continue to advance public health in the future.

Sincerely,

Peter Marks, MD, PhD