The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has tapped Dr. Vinay Prasad to lead the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which oversees vaccines, blood supply, and gene therapies.
Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary wrote on X that he would bring “the kind of scientific rigor, independence, and transparency” that is needed.
“He brings a great set of skills, energy, and competence to the FDA,” Makary, reportedly wrote in an email to staff obtained by The Washington Post.
The appointment, replacing Dr. Peter Marks, has also received some backlash from social media users.
Prasad enjoys a huge following on social media, where he often comments on popular health and politics topics.
He has also been accused of spreading misinformation about Covid vaccines by the Association of Immunization Managers. He has also criticized the decision to approve the shots for children, even though recent research has found the vaccines protected children from the sometimes debilitating effects of Long Covid.
Here’s what to know about him.
Early life
Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Prasad — whose full name is Vinayak — was born to immigrant parents. They later moved to northern Indiana. He attended Michigan State University in the early 2000s, earning degrees in philosophy and physiology before moving to the University of Chicago for his medical degree and Johns Hopkins University for a master’s in public health.
“I’m a medical oncologist who does research on policy and the evidence base of medicine. What I do directly follows from the classes I took in college,” he said in an interview published by Michigan State’s Honors College.
In 2015, he completed a fellowship in oncology at the National Cancer Institute and in haematology at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Prasad is not married and has no known children.
Recent work
From 2015 to 2020, he taught at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon.
Prasad is now a professor of epidemiology, biostatistics, and medicine at U.C. San Francisco. He is also a practicing haematologist oncologist at San Francisco General Hospital.
He runs the VKPrasad lab there, studying cancer drugs, health policy, clinical trials, and better decision-making.
He teaching at at U.C. San Francisco has won awards.
He is the author of more than 4,000 peer-review papers, has penned more than 100 op-eds, and hosts an oncology podcast. His YouTube channel has over 100,000 subscribers.
He’s published two books titled: “Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer” and “Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives.”
Views on vaccines
Prasad’s views on vaccines are a relatively mixed bag. He has criticized Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr’s conspiracy theories linking certain vaccination’ to autism, but also believes that children should not be subject to the Covid vaccine.
“For years, RFK Jr. has pushed the long-debunked link between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. He has, in fact, made millions from peddling this bunk,” Prasad said in a piece last November.
“If RFK Jr. uses his perch as HHS secretary to discourage parents from getting their children inoculated with the MMR vaccine, severe negative repercussions could result, including measles outbreaks and childhood deaths. This is not a good policy,” he added.
Prasad has lamented how the nation talks about vaccines, saying they should be discussed “just like drugs.” He’s called to repeal vaccine indemnification, including the national vaccine injury compensation program.
Furthermore, Prasad has said that mRNA vaccine science should be deprioritized. The Covid vaccines are mRNA vaccines.
In a more recent post, he said the CDC should pull the Covid shot for kids, “because there is no randomized evidence that kids ever benefit (in terms of real clinical outcomes) from this shot, and no evidence of any sort that a kid born today will need one in the future.”
But, he’s also said the vaccine itself was “miraculous” and life-saving.
“I’m 100% persuaded that an older, unvaccinated person who did not have COVID-19 definitely benefited from the vaccine in January, February, and March of 2021,” he said in an interview on Substack. “…Now, what I’m not sure about is if a 20-year-old who already had COVID-19, do they benefit from getting the dose of the vaccine?”
Discussing the recent measles outbreak, Prasad has said there should not be a culture where “adults are paranoid and get boosters.”
“If you think that I am going to check my records and get a measles booster in 2025 you are pretty f****** stupid,” he wrote on X.
Other views
Prasad has said the FDA is a failure, rubber stamping “too many useless products.”
He’s often discussed politics and ongoings at the Trump administration, saying that withdrawing from the World Health Organization is in America’s interest. Prasad has taken issue with recent media reaction to mass layoffs.
He’s questioned RFK Jr’s link to the Samoa measles outbreak, and spoken out in support of an effort to ban artificial dye in food products.
Prasad has called Jay Bhattacharya a “superb pick” to lead the National Institutes of Health, and criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci for perpetrating “malicious lies.”
Following a 2021 blog post, Prasad received heat for saying public health measures may have laid the groundwork for fascism. Several people labeled the remarks as antisemitic.
Prasad has said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has done a “bad job,” accusing them of using “propaganda” in their response to the Covid pandemic. He is a member of Urgency of Normal: a group formed in support of ending pandemic precautions for children.
“When the pandemic ends and people have no faith in public health, it would be wrong to blame Joe Rogan. It’s institutions like the CDC and our leaders who push bad info masquerading as science,” Prasad said.
