A Eulogy for Vinay Prasad's FDA Career
The Nation's Leading Expert on Prasadism Reflects
The article that was supposed to go up today was titled: You Can Just Quit, an honest suggestion for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s handpicked pandemic disinformation squad, coming from a place of genuine grace. Unfortunately, this warning would come too late for the Food & Drug Administration's Vinay Prasad, who held three senior roles including Chief Medical Officer and Chief Science Officer, for a mere handful of weeks. Walker Bragman of Important Context provides an excellent timeline of events:
The COVID-19 pandemic, combined with social media, rendered Vinay Prasad irrational and incoherent; prioritizing self-promotion over genuine scientific inquiry or giving helpful medical advice. By slinging insults and smears at his colleagues in science and medicine, often fantasizing about conducting mass layoffs, Prasad became a darling in conservative circles for his abrasiveness. He would be rewarded with multiple senior roles in the Trump Administration for this misconduct, which included frequent vulgarity-filled rantings. Prasad failed to realize that his ego would not make for a good fit for Trumpworld, which prioritizes loyalty to Trump above all.
After spreading frequent disinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, Prasad had essentially outlived his usefulness to the MAHA Extended Universe. Failing to go hard enough against the COVID-19 vaccine in the eyes of Trump's acolytes, it would not be long before his previous tweets claiming to be a Bernie Sanders fan & hoping for Biden to win the election came to light. In a totalitarian regime, any form of dissent must be swiftly eliminated with extreme prejudice.
After once being considered a rising star of the medical world, very few of Prasad's professional colleagues still respect him. From spewing an endless stream of vulgarities on social media, to gleefully accepting a role in the Trump administration's war on science, it's hard to think of just who would want to work alongside someone with such a stained, toxic reputation. Flaming out of a leadership role in the Food & Drug Administration in such a rapid and dramatic fashion, after just a handful of weeks of overruling vaccine experts based on irrational arguments and failing to take the administrative duties of his roles seriously, calls Prasad's professional judgement into question. At this point, he's merely a professional liability.
After years of calling for the mass layoffs of scientists and doctors over the COVID-19 vaccine, Vinay Prasad finding himself in the unemployment line is an entertaining bit of schadenfreude - and with federal funding for medical research in such a compromised state, Prasad's career in science and medicine may be over permanently. This saga is a cautionary tale of the folly of aligning with cults of personality such as Trumpworld and the anti-vaccine movement, which inevitably eat their own. Students of medicine and science would do well to learn from Prasad's example of why you don't get in bed with the anti-vaccine movement.
Now expelled former medical student and anti-vaccine influencer Kevin Bass, is still defending Vinay Prasad on social media.
Meanwhile at the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya is being even further cuckolded by the Trump Administration, and conservative rage against Marty Makary continues to build as the Food and Drug Administration hasn't completely banished the COVID-19 vaccine. It's hard to see their tenures going on for much longer, likely replaced by more extreme and outrageous candidates more loyal to Trump, RFK Jr. and their wider agenda of destroying federal regulatory authority in its entirety. This extended temper tantrum, destroying everything in its grasp, is a historic crisis.
Vinay Prasad's legacy will go down as a comedic footnote in a much larger tragedy. In conflict-stricken parts of the world, landmines have been deployed as an area denial tactic to deter adversarial forces, as most recently demonstrated in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. After these conflicts end, the active minefields remain, often marked with explicit signage to ward off civilians. Standard operating procedure for navigating and dismantling minefields require a great deal of patience and specialized equipment, or what Prasad would call “living in fear.”
Vinay Prasad thought he could slam on the gas and plough straight through the clearly marked minefield that is the modern anti-vaccine movement, in pursuit of personal wealth and prestige. This did not end well for him.
As American doctors no longer feel they can trust the American government, and the "Make America Healthy Again" influencers have collected their pound of flesh, Prasad's true legacy is being despised by all sides of the American political spectrum. Having spent years archiving Prasad's extensive record of medical disinformation and personal insults, I can't help but laugh. Prasad could have stayed at UCSF, safely critiquing the Medical Establishment from the outside. The anti-vaccine movement was never going to accept any sort of "compromise" from Prasad and Makary regarding the COVID-19 vaccine approvals.
Now that he's outside the Medical Establishment again, will Prasad return to his old antics on Youtube, Twitter, and Substack? The audience he cultivated by blocking numerous doctors and scientists who corrected his frequent errors, which once filled his comment sections with anger and vitriol, has been radicalized against him. Or will he grow even more extreme, claiming “Big Pharma” forced him out of the FDA? It's impossible to predict. Needless to say, I don't have much sympathy.
While it won't undo the damage he's done, Vinay Prasad could start by writing personal apologies to everyone he's unfairly smeared over the past few years. Donating the revenue he recieved from social media and the FDA to Long COVID research. Sitting down and actually reviewing the latest research on COVID-19's impacts, instead of falsely claiming it's a "cold." While I doubt this would actually happen, it's important that Prasad take this opportunity to set a good example.
Until then, nobody should let Vinay Prasad live this down. He wanted to become a celebrity, appearing on countless podcasts and Youtube videos spewing unscientific garbage to stand out and build a personal brand for himself. Now everyone knows him as the biggest clown in medicine, flaming out of the Trump Administration in a matter of just a few weeks. Was it worth it, Vinay?
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