Vinay Prasad FDA Drama

Your Q&A nurses David, Nicole, and Ashley dive into some drama around Dr. Vinay Prasad, who replaced villain Peter Marks as head of the important Center for Biologics Education and Research (CBER) at the FDA.

According to mainstream media reporting, Dr. Prasad left the FDA just months into his new role after pressure and controversy from Laura Loomer, an independent journalist with both a fervent loyalty to Donald Trump and an influential voice within his administration.

On July 21st Loomer posted on X:

We have a crisis at the FDA! A wolf in sheep’s clothing is sabotaging President Trump’s bold “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda! Dr. Vinay Prasad, a self-proclaimed progressive liberal and Bernie Sanders fanboy, has wormed his way into a top FDA role as Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) after he was appointed by RFK Jr.

This is no mere bureaucratic misstep. It’s a catastrophic vetting failure that threatens to derail the America First healthcare revolution. Prasad’s anti-Trump rhetoric, radical left-wing ideology, and deliberate actions to obstruct our President’s deregulatory mission prove he’s a dangerous misfit. The time to act is NOW—Prasad must be REMOVED before he destroys Trump’s vision for a healthier America!

She brought screenshots, she brought video clips, she brought audio clips and she was successful; Dr. Prasad resigned from the FDA days later.

In the short time since, more of the story has come out, and it is indeed a massive scandal - but not for the reasons Laura Loomer is giving.

This scandal is about much more that Vinay Prasad vs Laura Loomer - it is about how powerful corporations silence their critics.

Prasad’s first few months in the role were an inversion of his predecessors Peter Marks and Janet Woodcock, both of whom approved unsafe and ineffective drugs against the advice of their own staff. Prasad’s ouster has people looking closely at a variety of enemies he has made over the years - including large pharmaceutical companies that suddenly had billion-dollar products in his crosshairs.

Is there more to this story than a Bernie Bro being exiled from MAGA/MAHA? Of course there is, and there are patterns we’ve seen many times before in The Pharma Playbook.