Vinay Prasad Returns to FDA

Within two weeks of his unceremonious departure, the COVID vaccine skeptic is back as the nation’s top vaccine regulator.

This piece has been updated from its original email version.

Just one day after a man who reportedly believed the COVID-19 vaccine made him ill shot at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s complex in Atlanta, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that a doctor with a history of casting doubt on the safety of the mRNA shots will rejoin the Food and Drug Administration as its top vaccine regulator.

Nearly two weeks ago, Vinay Prasad was headed back to California to “spend more time with his family” after being ousted from the FDA. Today, he is back at the agency at the request of Commissioner Marty Makary, resuming one of his roles as the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies.

Prior to his departure, Prasad had also served as the FDA’s chief medical and scientific officer. It is not clear if he will also resume those posts as well.

Prasad’s exit had come amid a right-wing push that coincided with a conflict between his division and biotech company Sarepta over Elevidys, its treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare but fatal degenerative disorder in children. On Prasad’s watch, the FDA had attempted to pull Elevidys following the deaths of several recipients. The decision, however, was quickly reversed and the company’s shipments of the drug resumed after a voluntary freeze. Within days, Prasad was out—reportedly at Donald Trump’s behest despite pushback from his allies, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and Makary.

The push to remove the CBER chief had begun with far-right activist and Trump ally Laura Loomer, who accused him of being a “leftist saboteur” working to undermine Trump’s deregulatory agenda. Loomer had resurfaced old tweets of Prasad’s in which the doctor, a well-known public health contrarian, had claimed to be a progressive despite his long advocacy for the laissez-faire response to the COVID-19 pandemic pushed by the political right. As Important Context has previously noted, these claims provided Prasad a certain amount of cover to evangelize right-wing positions, including casting doubt on the efficacy of COVID mitigation measures and the safety of the mRNA vaccines.

Prasad has repeatedly hyped up concerns about rare, often self-resolving side effects of the shots, in young men in particular—namely myocarditis. He has demanded randomized controlled trials for boosters, cutting against the mainstream of public health and promising unnecessary delays in the face of a mutating virus. In October 2022, Prasad suggested that the bivalent boosters had been insufficiently tested.

During his short time at the agency, Prasad had worked with Makary to limit access to new COVID boosters. Public health advocates had celebrated his departure, but anti-vaccine voices and supporters of Kennedy, who hold conspiratorial views about the safety of pharmaceutical products, fumed.

For now, Prasad rejoining the FDA is a victory for its commissioner HHS secretary and his acolyte, Makary, but Loomer has promised to fight back. In a post on X, she vowed to heavily scrutinize HHS and FDA to expose “rot.”

“In another egregious personnel decision under the Trump administration, it is now being reported that longtime progressive Marxist Vinay Prasad who referred to President Trump’s supporters as criminals and compared them to drug addicts after saying he stabbed a Trump voodoo doll to ‘curse Trump’ is apparently back at FDA after @MartyMakary advocated for him,” she tweeted. “In the coming weeks, I will be ramping up my exposes of officials within HHS and FDA so the American people can see more of the pay for play rot themselves and how rabid Trump haters continue to be hired in the Trump administration. There are several Senate Confirmation hearings coming up and I have multiple oppo books ready for distribution! Should be a good time.”