Dr. Peter Marks is being treated as a hero for standing up to RFK, Jr., but in any normal universe the bureaucrat would be treated as a pariah.
Forget for the moment that Marks is hardly the self-sacrificing saint and expert people claim he is, and get down to brass tacks about why he was actually fired: he refused to give his boss access to data to which he was entitled. Data, actually, to which all Americans should be entitled: the database of reported potential vaccine injuries called VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System).
VAERS exists for a reason: to give researchers data on reported incidents of potential vaccine injuries. It is a quick and dirty way to screen for patterns in reactions, real or perceived, to vaccines when they are rolled out into the general population. Since all medical trials are limited in scope and duration, all treatments have some sort of monitoring system that are supposed to pick up on potential issues that develop once the treatments are sent out into the wild.
A study with 30, 60, or 100 people that follow them for a few weeks won’t pick up on side effects that might show up when the rate is 1 in a thousand, 10 thousand, or 100,000. Chances are pretty good they wouldn’t pick up ones that are 1 in 50 or 1 in 100.
Since vaccines are given to millions of people and some serious side effects–such as myo- or peri-carditis in young men with the COVID vaccines in young men–are only detected once the vaccines are out there for a while. VAERS picked up a number of potential issues in the COVID vaccine and has done the same with others.
That is why it exists, after all. Despite the religious fervor with which some people revere vaccines as some sort of elixir of life everywhere and always, the reality is that like anything else they have upsides and downsides. Peanut butter is great but is deadly to some people. Same with fish, antibiotics, and anything else. Heck, some people develop allergies to sunlight.
RFK, Jr. and his staff were being denied access to VAERS data because Marks didn’t want him to have it. That, my friends, is a firing offense.
Yea, I don’t get to hide departmental expenses, or product details from my CEO if he asks for it. I would have no good reason at all to hide things. Marks is the guy in the wrong here 100%.
— 𝔻𝕠𝕔𝕥𝕠𝕣 𝔽𝕒𝕥𝕖 (@georg3) April 7, 2025
Obviously the people who hate RFK, Jr., Trump, or even just Republicans will cheer Marks on as if “The Science” means that you can do anything you want if you are a High Priest of the Dark Arts, but the reality is much more prosaic: RFK Jr. is the Senate-approved Cabinet Secretary and Marks had no right to deny him access to data just because Marks disagrees with him.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Shortly before he was forced to resign, the nation’s top vaccine regulator says he refused to grant Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s team unrestricted access to a tightly held vaccine safety database, fearing that the information might be manipulated or even deleted.
In an interview with The Associated Press, former Food and Drug Administration vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks discussed his efforts to “make nice” with Kennedy and address his longstanding concerns about vaccine safety, including by developing a “vaccine transparency action plan.”
Marks agreed to give Kennedy’s associates the ability to read thousands of reports of potential vaccine-related issues sent to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS. But he would not allow them to directly edit the data.
“Why wouldn’t we? Because frankly we don’t trust (them),” he said, using a profanity. “They’d write over it or erase the whole database.”
In short, Marks invented a fear, based on something so implausible as to be fantasy–and refused to do his job. As for the “I don’t trust them” excuse I say: none of us trust you, Marks, because of how mismanaged things have been. How many people know that the top two FDA vaccine officials resigned in protest over what they considered to be unsafe recommendations for COVID boosters?
They did, and the media barely noticed. That was real, Marks’ excuse is based on fantasies that he can read the minds of his bosses. Yet the media has turned him into a hero.
I don’t think journalists (and scientists) understand how damning this looks
They think this makes Peter Marks a hero, but normal people look at this and say “why is the vaccine safety database off limits to the Secretary of Health?” https://t.co/hEptLD9a8a
— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) April 7, 2025
Marks is proving RFK, Jr. right, at least in his suspicions that the people in charge don’t want anyone to see the whole picture.
VAERS, to be sure, is based on self-reporting, but it has become very controversial over the past few years. For instance, Jan Malcolm, Minnesota’s Secretary of Health and a huge liberal proponent of the COVID-19 vaccine, reported a vaccine injury on VAERS and she wasn’t even contacted for years.
It was a life-threatening blood clot. Reported by a Public Health Official who ran a state’s COVID response.
And it was ignored. For three years.
Huh.
That would have been interesting to know, THREE FKN YEARS AGO.
— Mitch “The Wałęsa Project” Berg 🇺🇸🇳🇴🇪🇪🇦🇷 (@mitchpberg) February 9, 2024
As for Marks himself, I went to one of my favorite sources on such matters because, well, what do I know about Marks? Nothing, other than what the media tells me.
Marks, it seems, is a boob.
Too bad, so sad. Oh well, Mr. Marks. Now go sell yourself to Pfizer if you can.
