Inside the fall of Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s top vaccine official

Vinay Prasad had a problem. Several, actually. His staff at the Food and Drug Administration kept leaking to the press. He was under attack by President Trump’s allies after moving to pull a gene therapy off the market. Democrats were not happy with his Covid vaccine restrictions, and anti-vaccine advocates were lambasting him for approving the shots at all. 

He sent off an email, obtained by STAT, to his team on Saturday evening, attempting to control the backlash. The agency’s recent crackdown on the gene therapy product was driven by a scientific consensus, he said. Not just him. 

“The motivation is solely what we think is in the public interest— the accurate judgment of benefits and risks,” Prasad wrote.