Dr. Peter Marks, the former head of vaccine regulation for the Food and Drug Administration, has been hired by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.
Multiple outlets confirmed that Marks, who played a key role in Operation Warp Speed to develop COVID-19 vaccines during President Donald Trump’s first term, will oversee molecule discovery and infectious diseases at Lilly Research Laboratories.
“Peter’s expertise strengthens our abilities across multiple areas, both in our existing portfolio and in our work in emerging areas,” the company told Reuters.
Marks served as the head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research from 2016 until he resigned this March, citing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s opposition to the status quo on vaccines.
Marks wrote in his resignation letter that “it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
Kennedy and several others in the Make America Healthy Again movement have criticized the pipeline from the FDA to the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, the hematologist-oncologist who replaced Marks at CBER this summer, published research in the British Medical Journal in 2016 that more than a quarter of former FDA employees who approved cancer drugs from 2001 to 2010 eventually left government to take private-sector jobs with the companies they once regulated.
At the time, Prasad called it a “revolving door” between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry.
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Calley Means, Trump’s health adviser and a key MAHA acolyte, said on X Tuesday that Marks’s decision to “take a multi-million dollar” position at the pharmaceutical company is “a scandal.”
HHS did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
, 2025-10-07 20:48:00, 
, Washington Examiner, %%https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/cropped-favicon.png?w=32, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/feed/, Gabrielle M. Etzel
