Marks cited Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s desire for “subservient confirmation” as reason for his departure.
In a letter addressed to acting Food and Drug Administrator (FDA) Commissioner Sara Brenner, Marks wrote he had decided to resign effective April 5. According to reports, Marks was given the choice to resign or be fired.
On Monday, stocks in major vaccine companies including Moderna and Novavax fell by more than 8 percent, in apparent response to Marks’s resignation. As CBER director, Marks was tasked with ensuring the safety and efficacy of biological products like vaccines.
“[Marks’s] departure from the FDA is a very worrisome signal that this administration is moving forward in a real way with Secretary Kennedy’s agenda to undermine trust in vaccines, and that is something that will gravely affect the health of people around the country,” said Richard Besser, CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson foundation and a former acting CDC director.
Public health experts and scientists have expressed fear about Kennedy’s long history as an anti-vaccine advocate since President Trump nominated him as HHS secretary shortly after the election.
Marks’s ouster brings to a head a series of developments that seem to bolster concerns about the agency’s direction, including reportedly tasking a major player in the anti-vaccine community to conduct a study looking for a link between vaccines and autism that Kennedy insists is real, despite many studies showing otherwise.
The top vaccine official had stated he had been “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,” Marks wrote.
Marks spoke in support of vaccinations, writing that they are “as old as our great nation” and noting how George Washington had considered smallpox vaccinations for his troops during the American Revolution.
Marks joined the FDA in 2012 as deputy center director for CBER and went on to become center director in 2016. He was a key part of Operation Warp Speed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the first Trump administration and became a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2022.
The longtime FDA official concluded his letter by writing, “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,” he wrote.
