STAT+: Vinay Prasad was not good for the FDA. But his ouster makes things worse

Vinay Prasad’s three-month tenure as one of the top officials at the Food and Drug Administration was bad for medicine. But his forced departure is probably worse.

It will likely be celebrated in many corners: by the many people who just don’t like Prasad, often because, at one point or another, he insulted them online; by investors in Sarepta Therapeutics, the gene therapy company that has received a second lease on life because one of Prasad’s decisions was reversed; by investors in other gene therapy products, whose odds of reaching the market just went up substantially; by patient advocates, flexing their political power, who have found that, while the Trump administration does not fear courts, it does still fear the angry parents of sick children; by Republicans in Congress who have found that the mantra that people have a “right-to-try” experimental drugs still plugs into an animating political philosophy.

But all of these views are myopic. Both Prasad’s appointment as head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and his rapid ouster were signs that scientific organizations that function well and help scientists and the public at large reach reasonable conclusions are being undermined. For vaccines, for science in general, and even for medicines for rare diseases, over the long term, this could be much worse.

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