A former top official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said he blocked members of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s team from directly accessing a vaccine database over concerns they would rewrite or erase the stored information.
Peter Marks, who headed the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research before being ousted in March, told The Associated Press in an interview published Monday that he agreed to allow Kennedy’s associates to read reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) but refused to allow them to directly edit the information.
“Why wouldn’t we? Because frankly we don’t trust [them],” Marks told the AP, using profanity. “They’d write over it or erase the whole database.”
Marks said he sought to work with Kennedy and address his concerns over vaccine transparency but found that the secretary only wanted “confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
VAERS is a voluntary, self-reported surveillance system of adverse events from vaccinations that is co-managed by both the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The system rose in prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as the vaccines were rolled out.
An HHS spokesperson reportedly told the AP in response that it made “perfect sense” for Kennedy’s staffers to seek access into VAERS to do their own analysis.
When asked by The Hill about the accusations Marks made in his AP interview, an HHS official said his claims were false.
Since leaving his post at the FDA, which he held for nearly a decade, Marks has embarked on a media campaign lambasting Kennedy’s actions as Health secretary.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Marks said Kennedy’s tenure at the HHS has so far been “very scary,” saying he left because he could not work for someone unwilling to “follow the science.”
Marks also alleged in his interview with the Journal that Kennedy’s team requested data on cases of brain swelling and deaths caused by the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines — information Marks says he couldn’t turn over because it didn’t exist.
