FDA Commissioner Marty Makary on Tuesday named Indian-origin hematologist oncologist Vinay Prasad as the next director of the Center for Biologics and Research. A staunch critic of the COVID-19 vaccine for children, Prasad had once claimed ‘God has given people arms to vote for Trump’ in an old post.

Prasad now joins the Food and Drug Administration from the University of California at San Francisco, where he served as an epidemiology professor. He has also worked at the National Cancer Institute. We checked the new CBER director’s social media posts to find his constant praise for President Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr.

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Back in November 2024, Vinay Prasad responded to White House Covid advisor Ashish Jha’s ‘God gave us two arms for flu shot and Covid booster’ with an analogy of his own.

“Ashish Jha should remember that God gave people two arms…One to vote for Donald Trump, and the other one to give thumbs up to RFK Jr,” Prasad wrote on X, platform formerly known as Twitter.

“He brings a great set of skills, energy, and competence to the FDA, and I know that he is eager to begin immersing himself in the important work of CBER and the agency as a whole,” Makary said Tuesday in an internal FDA letter obtained by Bloomberg Law.

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In March, Peter Marks, the FDA’s former head of the division, was pushed out of the agency. Scott Steele, an FDA insider for the past five years, had been serving as acting head of the division after Marks’ exit. Vinay Prasad has been critical of some of Marks’s decisions. He objected overruling review teams to speed approvals, according to some of his posts.

Prasad claimed that children don’t need the COVID-19 vaccine and it shouldn’t be mandated in schools.