The former top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration says he was forced out of his job for trying to protect vaccine data from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Dr. Peter Marks told The Associated Press Sunday he refused to hand over unrestricted access to a vaccine safety database to the Health and Human Services secretary and his team, fearing that the information might be misused, manipulated, or deleted altogether.
Initially, Marks said that he tried to be on good terms with his vaccine-skeptic new boss regarding vaccine safety, making plans to develop a “vaccine transparency action plan.” Marks also gave Kennedy and his team the ability to view reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), but drew the line at allowing them to edit the data.
“Why wouldn’t we? Because frankly we don’t trust (them),” Marks said, using an expletive. “They’d write over it or erase the whole database.”
Marks’s interview came the same day that Kennedy visited Seminole County in Texas, where a young child became the third person, and second child, to die from this year’s measles outbreak. None of the three had received the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. Kennedy has a long reputation of being anti-vaccine, which he tried to deny during his confirmation hearings.
But ever since being sworn in as secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy’s true colors have been on full display, as he has responded poorly to the initial deaths from the measles outbreak, expressed support for dubious measles treatments, ended support for vaccine initiatives, and even at one point claimed the measles vaccine was as bad as the disease itself.
Over the weekend in Texas, Kennedy attempted some damage control by saying “[t]he most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” referring to the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. But, while on that visit, he also met with two doctors who claim to have treated children with measles using the steroid aerosolized budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin, calling them “extraordinary healers.”
Both treatments are considered unproven and aren’t accepted by the medical community, once again showing that Kennedy hasn’t actually given up his vaccine skepticism, even as the measles outbreak continues to grow and his government agency fires the people responsible for fighting diseases.
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