FDA’s Top Vaccine Official, Dr. Peter Marks, Resigns, Claims ‘Truth And Transparency Are Not Desired By The Secretary’

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official who helped drive the government’s COVID-19 vaccination program resigned under pressure Friday amid a measles outbreak and accused Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of health misinformation, according to reports.

Dr. Peter Marks, the Director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, wrote he was resigning with “a heavy heart” from his role effective April 5, The New York Times reported. Claiming he was initially interested in working to address Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kennedy’s concerns about vaccines, Marks added that “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.”

Marks opted to resign after an HHS official told him to resign or be fired, The Washington Post reported.

Marks highlighted his work of realizing Operation Warp Speed, the first Trump administration’s effort to develop COVID-19 vaccines. He also wrote how lessons from that program influenced the control of mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) in 2022 and could prove useful in the responses to other public health challenges, including the ongoing H5N1 avian influenza and measles outbreaks.

“Efforts currently being advanced by some on the adverse health effects of vaccination are concerning,” Marks wrote. “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.”

Marks recalled President George Washington’s decision to order his troops be vaccinated against smallpox — a step which preceded the vaccine-driven global eradication of smallpox and country-wide elimination of wild polio — and highlighted successes involving the two-dose measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine in preventing measles. “[T]he vaccine very simply does not cause autism,” Marks wrote. (RELATED: 10-Year Study Of More Than 650,000 People Releases Report On Measles Vaccine And Autism)

The first gene therapy approved in the U.S. gained its approval under Marks’s directorship, he wrote. The cell-based anticancer gene therapy, Kymriah, was approved in 2017.

Marks also expressed hope that “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.”

Marks’s resignation came amid multiple measles outbreaks across the country. There have been five measles outbreaks involving 483 confirmed cases across 20 states as of March 27, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The one confirmed death from the outbreak was of an unvaccinated, otherwise healthy, school-aged child in Texas, according to the state’s authorities.

Kennedy faced Democrats’ accusations of peddling vaccine misinformation or assuming conflicting stances on vaccine use during his Senate confirmation hearing. He responded by saying he was “pro-safety” and not anti-vaccine, that all his children were vaccinated and he would not use the position of HHS Secretary to discourage or complicate vaccine uptake.

Kennedy expressed concern about the outbreak and highlighted the importance of the MMR vaccine in a March 2, 2025 op-ed.

“The decision to vaccinate is a personal one. Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons,” he wrote.