The exact thing the Left warned would happen under the Trump administration has happened under President Joe Biden: He is trying to rush the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process and even circumvent it to roll out COVID-19 booster shots. Biden’s actions have led to the resignations, in protest, by two top FDA officials.
The agency announced this week that Dr. Marion Gruber, the director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review, and her deputy, Dr. Philip Krause, will step down from their positions this fall. Politico reported their resignations were tied to the Biden administration’s recent push to make booster shots available about eight months after vaccination.
Biden wants COVID-19 booster shots to be rolled out by Sept. 20, which has forced the FDA to scramble “to collect and analyze data that clearly demonstrate the boosters’ benefits” before the deadline, Politico reported. Apparently, the Biden administration announced this timeline before the FDA had signed off on it.
To be clear, I think a lot of what the FDA does is mostly pointless and wasteful. And, I think anyone who wants a coronavirus booster shot should be able to get one regardless of whether the FDA says it’s OK. But Biden and his vice president, both of whom contributed to the baseless fearmongering about former President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, suggested baselessly that Trump would try to pressure the FDA to authorize the COVID-19 vaccines before the agency was ready. Indeed, Kamala Harris publicly stated she would not get the coronavirus vaccine unless public health officials, including those at the FDA, assured people that it was safe.
Concerns that Trump was trying to politicize the vaccine approval process were so rampant that Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine official, went on record vowing to resign if the Trump administration pushed through an approval before the FDA agreed to it.
“I could not stand by and see something that was unsafe or ineffective that was being put through,” Marks said at the time. “You have to decide where your red line is, and that’s my red line. I would feel obligated [to resign] because in doing so, I would indicate to the American public that there’s something wrong.”
How, then, should we see Gruber and Krause’s resignations? Clearly, they disagree with the Biden administration’s approach, and several reports show there are a lot of health officials who agree with them.
So, say what you will about Trump, but he never crossed the FDA’s red line. Biden, however, has.
