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The US biotech industry’s main lobby group issued a rare warning following the forced and abrupt resignation of the nation’s top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), saying the loss of his experienced leadership would “erode scientific standards” and affect the development of transformative therapies to fight disease. The statement, issued on Saturday by John Crowley of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), followed the news a day earlier that Dr Peter Marks had resigned over what he called “misinformation and lies” from health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. It was an uncommon admonition from a sector that has largely been silent amid the second Donald Trump presidential administration’s first months in office. (Vargas, 3/30)

Since even before Trump took office, the pharma and biotech industries have adopted a cautious approach to the new administration, electing to largely operate behind the scenes when it moved in directions that threatened their interests and seizing at least a couple of opportunities to meet with him. The question now is whether the ouster of Peter Marks, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, will change the industries’ strategy — and whether it will matter. (Mast and Feuerstein, 3/29)

The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official has been pushed out, according to people familiar with the matter. Dr. Peter Marks, who played a key role in the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed to develop Covid-19 vaccines, stepped down Friday. He submitted his resignation after a Health and Human Services official earlier in the day gave him the choice to resign or be fired, people familiar with the matter said. “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,” Marks wrote in a resignation letter referring to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Whyte, 3/28)