Kennedy’s War on Truth Just Claimed Another Victim

Dr. Peter Marks, a top FDA scientist with deep experience, is out. An anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist is in. This is what happens when junk science runs the government. It's not reform, it's sabotage.

Dr. Peter Marks and tools of his trade

“This man doesn’t care about the truth. He cares about what is making him followers.”

You’d think that statement was about Donald Trump, right? Nope. It’s about someone just as corrosive: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaxxer, junk-science zealot who now holds alarming sway over America’s health-care future. The speaker? Dr. Peter Marks, a leading scientist who for years has led the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the branch responsible for overseeing vaccine safety, cell and gene therapies.

Marks quit the FDA on Friday, but not before taking a final, precision-guided shot at Kennedy. His departure followed a sudden summons to the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday, where, according to The New York Times, he was given a choice: resign or be fired.

He chose to resign, but not silently. “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary,” Marks wrote in his resignation letter, according to the Times story, “but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”

That "secretary" — RFK Jr. — is building a team that seems less interested in public health and more interested in performance politics and conspiracy peddling.

Just last week, we learned that a tax-funded study Kennedy ordered up will be led by none other than a key figure in the anti-vaxx movement. The study is designed to “reexamine” a long-debunked vaccine-autism theory, The New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

This, despite decades of rigorous, peer-reviewed research from leading scientists around the world that have thoroughly discredited that claim. You might recall I wrote about this study when it was first announced. Now, it has a name attached to it: David Geier, a discredited huckster with little real scientific background who has published numerous articles trying to link mercury in vaccines to autism.

In 2012, Maryland state authorities found that Geier had been practicing medicine without a license, an action that also led to the revocation of medical licenses for two actual doctors he worked with, including his father, Mark Geier. Federal judges, meanwhile, have rejected the Geiers' research on autism and vaccines as too unreliable to stand up in court.

Meanwhile, Marks — no bureaucratic benchwarmer— is gone. Unlike Kennedy and Geier, who lack both a medical degree and any meaningful experience in health research, Marks has spent decades deep in the science of medicine.

I first became acquainted with Marks during a group interview years ago, when he ran the Adult Leukemia Service and served as Chief Clinical Officer at Yale’s Smilow Cancer Hospital. He struck me as smart, data-driven, and a bit bookish. But that’s usually the way with researchers. We only used a brief quote from him in the story that was written, but he clearly knew his stuff.

Marks earned both an MD and a PhD in cell and molecular biology from NYU. His early research on “endocytosis”—how cells absorb substances—was done under the mentorship of Dr. Frederick Maxfield, whose groundbreaking work continues to influence research into Alzheimer’s and other tough-to-solve diseases.

In short, Peter Marks is exactly the kind of expert you want protecting public health. And now, thanks to RFK Jr.'s rise, and the cult of misinformation he's turned to as a balm for a life defined by grievance and conspiratorial delusion, Marks has been forced out.

Meanwhile, Kennedy gets more room to maneuver. The truth is losing ground. And the consequences could be deadly.

I’ve written about Kennedy extensively, most recently just days ago in my commentary: “Your Money or Your Life! Trump is Robbing Us of Both.” Most of us can grit our teeth and make do on the kitchen-table finances side, paying more for groceries, gas, and basic needs — even cars and car parts — under Trump’s tariffs and his almost comically inept response to inflation.

But the medicine that helps us get through today, and the science that could save us tomorrow, isn’t replaceable.

Undermining that—to score clicks, to settle scores, to play to the paranoid corners of the internet—isn’t just reckless. It’s a matter of life and death.

Real Problems

The tragedy is that Kennedy could have stepped into this job with a mandate to fix real problems. He’s long talked about making America healthier, a worthy goal in a nation drowning in ultra-processed foods, rising chronic disease, and a health system that profits more from sickness than from prevention.

He could have gone after Big Pharma’s price-gouging, or tackled the obscene cost of everyday medicine that forces millions of Americans to make brutal choices between prescriptions and groceries. He could have trained the full force of the federal government on autism itself, a lifelong condition that affects how people behave, communicate, and learn.

In mid-December, I wrote about how Kennedy’s HHS could have made a real difference in dealing with autism. At least one major insurer was limiting access to “Applied Behavior Analysis” —the evidence-based, gold-standard therapy for children with autism—according to a report by ProPublica. The cuts hit the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable patients: kids in Medicaid plans across nearly two dozen states.

Want to make a difference? Don’t chase vaccine ghosts. Fix that and, finally, live up to your storied family past.

But instead of standing up for real health reform and our most vulnerable Americans, Kennedy has chosen to burn down trust in vaccines, push discredited science, and gut the very agencies that could’ve helped him deliver on his promises. He had a chance to lead. Instead, he picked the grift, making him just one more huckster in Trump’s chaos-courting leadership team.

Now David Geier, a discredited flim-flammer, is inside our government. Making decisions. Influencing policy. Shaping the health of children for years to come. And Dr. Peter Marks—a physician-scientist with real expertise, deep experience, and a career built on rigorous science—is out.

How sad is that? How dangerous might it become? What do you think?