Vinay Prasad rose to fame as a COVID-era public health establishment critic. Then he became part of the public health establishment. Now he's back on the outside following his controversial tenure at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), which is responsible for approving vaccines and gene therapies.
In this interview with Reason's Zach Weissmueller, Prasad, a physician, author, and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, responds to the array of intense criticism he received during his tenure, ranging from agency insiders complaining about his management style to Wall Street Journal editorial writers branding him a "Bernie Sanders acolyte in MAHA drag" to conservative influencers such as Laura Loomer deriding him as a progressive-left "saboteur."
He defends his decision to reject Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine application, which the agency has since approved following his departure, and explains a controversial internal memo in which he wrote that "at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination" and that "for the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children." The official FDA report made public after Prasad left identified zero "certain" childhood deaths linked to the vaccine, with five classified as "possibly" and two as "probably."
