The Food and Drug Administration's top vaccines official says he hopes to find common ground with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was picked Thursday by President-elect Donald Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
"What I would ask of him is that he keep an open mind. We're happy to try to show as much of the data as we can. And I think the data are essentially overwhelming, in certain areas, but we'll just have to engage in the dialogue," said Dr.
Peter Marks, speaking at an event hosted by the Milken Institute in Washington, D.C., this week, ahead of Trump's decision .
Kennedy has insisted that he is not "anti-vaccine" and has pledged not to ban vaccines under Trump. Instead, Kennedy has promised to "restore the transparency" around vaccine safety data and records that he accuses HHS officials of hiding. Marks flatly rebuked Kennedy's claims about the safety data.
"There's no secret files. I mean, if they're secret, I hold a security clearance. If they are secret from me then, they must be at some other level of classification," he said.
Public health experts have objected to Kennedy's long record of misleading statements questioning vaccine safety and worry he could upend decades' worth of hard-fought wins in improving vaccination rates against deadly diseases . The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a watchdog group that has often clashed with the FDA, likened the pick to "putting a Flat Earther at the head of NASA." Marks, a career civil servant w.