Prasadism Infests the Food & Drug Administration
Another Federal Public Health Agency is Compromised
As the nation's leading scholar on Prasadism, the extremist pseudoscientific ideology which rose to prominence amongst anti-vaccine cranks on social media in 2021, it's probably time to start talking about the former UCSF academic Vinay Prasad's sudden installation into the senior leadership of the Food and Drug Administration, one of the most essential institutions of the federal government.
I am reminded of the May 13th episode of the Death Panel podcast titled: "Nathan Tanks the Economy: An Oral History of 100 Days of DOGE w/ Nathan Tankus," who writes the most sublime Notes on the Crises. Nathan goes into incredible, excruciating detail about how Elon's most loyal 20-something computer touchers, with the help of an automated MadLibs spambot, nearly destroyed the federal payments system and sent the nation into financial default, crashing the global economy as we know it. Nathan recounts telling a former Trump Administration official that they must:
"…get those fucking children out of the Treasury before they kill us all!"
The Food and Drug Administration is of similar importance, ensuring children don't die from contaminated food and medicines aren't killing patients. To corrupt this essential institution with such a perverse, highly unethical ideology such as Prasadism, is to make an incredibly pointless gamble with the health of hundreds of millions of American lives. This is a politically motivated campaign of humiliation and intimidation against doctors and scientists with real-world responsibility and actual achievements under their belt, by someone who is known for little more than obscene and highly unprofessional social media antics.
Vinay Prasad frequently lobbied accusations of censorship against anyone who challenged the absurdities of those who demanded Americans blindly embrace the SARS-CoV-2 virus, willfully ignorant of it's potential for serious harm. In reality, Prasad's preferred COVID-19 pandemic response would have resulted in 850,000 additional deaths, and millions more disabled, according to epidemiologist Dr. Robert D. Morris:
Now that Prasad is an employee of the federal government, he seeks to censor inconvenient facts such as this, which contradict his fictional narrative.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary
Or, This Asshole Again?
To understand how we got here, it's worth talking about Vinay Prasad's boss, his former co-author on numerous absurd academic papers, and now FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. Pre-pandemic, Makary became notorious for alleging that medical error was the third leading cause of death in America, a claim that was soundly debunked. When SARS-CoV-2 arrived on our shores in 2020, Marty Makary wildly underestimated the virus and it's potential for harm, insisting that America would reach "herd immunity" via the infection of hundreds of millions unvaccinated Americans, and that the pandemic would end in the spring of 2021, foolishly comparing the virus to the flu and common cold - something he still does today.
When it became obvious that SARS-CoV-2 can cause significant long-term health complications on a massive scale, Makary would rush to the media to downplay and minimize this fact, claiming that doctors, scientists, and public health officials were engaged in a conspiracy of "the medicalization of ordinary life:"
For telling conservatives what they wanted to hear, Marty Makary would be rewarded with over one-hundred forty appearances on the propaganda network Fox News in 2021 alone, spreading unscientific falsehoods to millions of Americans. When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. began plucking pediatric deaths at random and assigning blame to the COVID-19 vaccine, Marty Makary disgracefully endorsed RFK Jr. in this perverse endeavor. Makary's loyalty to Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. saw him rewarded with the role of FDA Commissioner, instead of any meaningful medical or scientific achievements. This is how you wind up with a compromised, incompetent government that drives the nation into rapid decline.
Knowing that he would be quite alone at the FDA in his vile contrarianism, Makary recruited a personal henchman to help carry out this curmudgeonly coup.
A Lethal Dose of Poison Into the FDA
"Wen, Jha, Prasad, Makary. All have one thing in common: their primary motivation is self-advancement and fame. They will step on any other health principle - be it protection of others through to being internally consistent - in order to advance their own prominence. Abhorrent." -Dr. Tyler Black, November 15th, 2024 via Twitter (tylerblack32)
Dr. Peter Marks, former head of the FDA vaccines and biologics decision, was a frequent target of smears by Vinay Prasad on social media - labelling him "a random heme onc doctor from Brigham" with a "meager scholarship record" (Compared to Prasad's body of impotent drivel? Phooey!) when baselessly fearmongering about the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine and falsely claiming the SARS-CoV-2 virus was harmless to children; disgusting misconduct that Prasad personally profited from.
After HHS Secretary RFK Jr. demanded that Dr. Marks turn over imaginary data about brain damage and death caused by the measles vaccine, yet another obscene conspiracy theory unsupported by evidence, Dr. Marks was forced out of the agency. Instead of defending his fellow medical colleague from unfounded abuse by a depraved, exploitative grifter, Vinay Prasad endorsed the abuse on his Substack:
Peter Marks was one of the most dangerous, pro-pharma regulators of the 21st century. He is leaving and crafting an narrative. That’s natural … The same media that lied about lab leak, masks, and all things covid is lying about Peter Marks.
Vinay then gleefully accepted the position Dr. Marks previously held - indicating that unprofessional social media rantings aligned with the Trump Administration's de-regulatory agenda would be rewarded with senior positions in critical federal institutions, a very poor model for governance. Under the guise of "gold standard evidence-based medicine," the depraved anti-vaccine movement has attained unprecedented amounts of power and influence.
Yet when given an inch, a scheming charlatan will always attempt to take a mile.
Defining Prasadism
"As Prasad dreams of mass purges - which have happened - the sheltered propagandists portray him as a free speech hero." -Dr. Jonathan Howard, February 16th, 2025 via Twitter (19joho)
For what follows, one must understand that Vinay Prasad's social media antics regarding COVID-19 transformed him from a once-respected rising star of medicine into a morally depraved contrarian in the eyes of his colleagues in medicine. When corrected on basic errors by his fellow doctor, he would immediately block them on social media to safeguard his loyal followers from encountering dangerous facts which overruled Prasad's emotional hysterics, inspiring the hashtag "#BlockedByVinay." Vinay's antics would also inspire a parody Twitter account, "THE PRASAD," which recently reactivated after a long hiatus
Needless to say, this is not typical for the overwhelming majority of medical professionals on social media.
When we reviewed Jay Bhattacharya's first 75 days as NIH Director, we noted that the economist enjoyed the censorship, humiliation, and intimidation of the doctors and scientists on staff - even employing an armed security detail on the rare occasion he would show his face on campus, cosplaying as a very important person to be respected instead of a worthless government stooge loyal to politicians over scientists. Vinay Prasad has a similar history of insults and smears against doctors and scientists, being especially vicious against women in science and medicine, hoping to incite his followers into harassing these dissenting voices into silence:
This aligns neatly with the Trump Administration's larger agenda, focused primarily on the abusive humiliation of anyone who prioritizes real-world expertise over irrational outbursts and a fetishization of dominance - even if the end result is rivers of blood stolen from innocent lives. However, this is not "evidence based," nor medicine, nor science, and certainly beneath any sort of "gold standard." It is a perverse, irrational, and inconsistent sham designed to confuse and overwhelm the general public into apathy.
Prasadism is a rejection of the collaborative nature of science and medicine, instead replaced with a cult of personality that centers one man's uninformed rantings above mountains of peer-reviewed research. Prasad boorishly anoints himself the ultimate judge of all medicine and science, broadcasting an unyielding torrent of personal insults and attacks on the character of others. It's one thing for the pseudointellectual sewer drains of Substack and Twitter, but another matter entirely to reward these sorts of antics with a senior role in an essential federal institution.
Well…scratch that last part.
You see, Prasad is a special boy, for whom one senior role is not enough. In a matter of weeks, having zero accomplishments at his first government posting, Vinay Prasad would be rewarded with multiple promotions - to Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Officer of the FDA. This is an incredibly foolish and unprecedented move - is this grifting bum collecting three paychecks, bankrolled by the hard-working American taxpayer? We're talking a great deal of responsibility to lay at the hands of someone with a well-documented history of incompetence and unprofessional misconduct. I would know, having archived the chronicle myself:
Pitiful Purges and Petty Grievances
"The FDA as we've known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed." -Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, via LinkedIn
While Prasad's most trusted co-author, quack sports physician Tracy Beth Hoeg, is being given a remedial education by the CDC's actual experts at the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Prasad is exploiting his newfound, unearned authority to purge and humiliate experienced civil servants, no matter how much damage this does to the FDA. If you reject Prasad's fantasies that the CDC hallucinated pediatric COVID-19 deaths and that there's a growing mass of young men who had their lives destroyed by the vaccine, accusations not supported by hard evidence, then Prasadism demands your head on a silver platter.
While the majority of professionals at the Food & Drug Administration tend to have a firmer grip on reality than Vinay Prasad, this refusal to embrace the Prasadist doctrine of feelings-based medicine has resulted in a lot of heads on platters, often escorted out by armed security. Vinay Prasad is gleefully enjoying the public humiliation of medical experts with real-world accomplishments while neglecting the actual responsibilities of his multiple roles. From Lizzy Lawrence at STAT News:
"Multiple agency employees, who requested anonymity to protect against retaliation, told STAT that Prasad seemed uninterested in the administrative work of being a center director...One CBER agency official said Prasad rarely attends center meetings with office directors”
What we have now is an immature, sadistic brat treating one of the federal government's most essential institutions as his personal plaything, neglecting the essential responsibilities of his not one, not two, but three! senior roles at an organization he is willfully ignorant about. Prasad is a special boy, and these grown-up duties are beneath him.
In just a few short weeks of being faced with the challenges of a grown-up job which requires more than hysterical screeching and wailing, Prasadism has been revealed to be a woefully inept farce - of course, looking at the rest of the Trump Administration's roster, this seems to be the singular requirement for getting a job in the federal government. Unable to produce scientific achievements of his own, Prasad committed himself to a destructive campaign of little more than attacking others and their achievement, including the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine.
The American Taxpayer is now being forced to foot the bill for a social media grifter who insisted upon taking their grift primetime. Here's the latest headline from CNN: "Top FDA vaccine official rejected broad use of Covid-19 shots" - failing to mention that Prasad cited completely obscene and unscientific nonsense as justification.
The thorny twist of the knife here is that Vinay Prasad had personally profited for years on social media by insisting that COVID-19 is merely a “cold” - a tired, long-debunked anti-vaccine myth, while claiming the vaccine was destroying young boys - regardless of mountains of peer-reviewed evidence proving otherwise. Yet, Vinay Prasad from his high horse of ignorance and lack of relevant expertise, is overruling the FDA’s credentialed experts based upon fearmongering over imagined fears of long-term, hypothetical harms caused by the COVID-19 vaccine, while sadistically denying the harms of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A source from the CNN article states this is "a major overreach of the responsibility of the FDA. The FDA is not supposed to have the power to restrict access to safe and effective products."
Yet, Vinay Prasad is a special boy. This is a worthless political stooge that has zero medical or scientific expertise and exists solely to leech off the American taxpayer to peddle the same anti-vaccine mythologies they personally profited from shilling on social media. With zero interest in doing his actual fucking job, Vinay Prasad has instead burned his legacy by pissing into the wind, with innocent American lives catching the flak as a result.
A Much-Needed Purge Beckons
Prasadism disqualified itself from a place in the ranks of scientific intellectualism some years ago. Vinay should have been shamefully lifted by the shoulders and dragged through the halls of his former employer, the University of California San Francisco, and kicked to the curb all the way back in 2021, when he claimed public health mitigations were a gateway drug to Nazism. Now, he is part of a regime who will be directly responsible for the deaths of millions of children around the world.
Prasad spiraled out of control from there, spewing endless streams of hateful bile which inspired real-world threats and violence amongst his followers. He crossed the line from good-faith criticism into unprofessional obscenity, only to be rewarded for such antics. Having personally notified UCSF Administration of Vinay Prasad's grave misconduct on multiple occasions, their inaction means they now share the blame for a compromised FDA, and whatever follows, as well as the mistreatment of numerous qualified scientists and doctors. I fear UCSF will shamefully exclude their role in this when teaching future doctors and nurses the history of this dark chapter for our nation. Allowing Prasad to launder credibility to (centuries old and quite tired) anti-vaccine myths with the prestige of UCSF's name is unforgivable.
Yet, one could enjoy a grim chuckle at the sheer schadenfreude of our present situation. Critics of Prasad's antics (such as myself) who raised the alarm for years, have been fully vindicated in an instant - just the same as Jay Bhattacharya at the NIH. While posting childish insults to social media is quite easy for anyone, actually managing a critical government institution brings numerous challenges and demands a certain level of humility. Prasad made it clear that he's woefully uninterested in doing his actual job(s), instead focusing on more baseless attacks against lifesaving vaccines & purges of America’s top scientists & civil servants.
For such indefensible neglect, Prasad must have every last penny of his taxpayer funded paychecks clawed back, stripped of his medical license, and condemned for his pitiful misconduct. Only by making an example of such rank, obscene failure, can we ensure that this never happens again. While Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is busy giving every last Z-list anti-vaccine celebrity a government handout in the form of a paycheck bankrolled by the American taxpayer, it has now become a central political priority to purge these anti-vaccine grifters from the ranks of the federal government, with extreme prejudice.
As America is learning the hard way, you can't judge one's ability as a civil servant based upon the volume of uncouth insults they spew. Prasadism was always a sham & someone else will be left to clean up the mess created by Vinay's extended tantrum.
May the Gods watch over them in what will be such a pitiful, thankless task.
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