Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine official who resigned last week amid pressure from the Trump administration, urged families to continue vaccinating their children.
Marks, who previously led the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, pointed to concerns around Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his anti-vaccine rhetoric in his decision to ultimately leave the post.
“I don’t know what he’s going to do, and I can’t make him do anything, but I can tell you, as a viewer, please consider getting your child vaccinated,” Marks said Friday evening in an interview with CNN, specifically calling out the deadly measles outbreak.
“If they’re not vaccinated, it’s easy to ignore measles because we haven’t seen it,” he added.
Marks told the public to take heed of medical standards.
“It is not just an innocent disease, benign disease. It kills one in 1,000 children in a developed country like the United States,” he told “OutFront” host Erin Burnett.
“We’ve already had two deaths in the United States, one in a child from this and these are needless deaths, because the vaccine is 98 percent effective against preventing measles, but close to 100 percent effective in preventing death,” the vaccine expert added.
The state of Texas has reported 481 cases of the viral disease, followed by New Mexico with 51 cases and Oklahoma with at least 10. A child also reportedly died from measles recently in the Lone Star State.
Kennedy, who was sworn in to lead the agency in February, has in recent weeks labeled the measles outbreak a “call to action” and encouraged parents to vaccinate their children against the disease. During confirmation hearings, he was questioned heavily on his controversial views around immunization.
The former independent presidential candidate has also previously raised concerns over the safety of childhood vaccines and suggested HHS could overhaul their immunization schedule.
Marks on Friday said the FDA has high standards for vaccine approval which shouldn’t be undermined by ranking officials. He added that Kennedy would have to “confront his maker” for “lies” about the safety of immunizations.
“No one at the FDA would ever let a vaccine out that they would not give to their own children,” he told Burnett. “And it is just breathtaking that anyone would try to dissuade parents from giving them their children vaccines, such as the measles vaccine, which is among the safest and most effective vaccines that we have.”
In a separate interview earlier this week with the Wall Street Journal, Marks argued that Kennedy’s leadership has been “very scary” thus far.
“I can never give allegiance to anyone else other than to follow the science as we see it,” Marks told the Journal. “That does not mean that I can just roll over and take conspiracy theories and justify them.”
He added that data shows around 50 million lives had been saved in the last 50 years alone by the vaccine.
