“Vinay Prasad has personally profited from spreading falsehoods about vaccines, masks, and COVID-19 on social media, especially in children.”
As MAHA was ramping up, we at SBM desperately tried sound the alarm bells about it. We were hardly alone. Countless others put in an enormous amount of effort to warn about medical disinformation. Together, we named names and laid out the evidence, clear as day. We couldn’t force anyone to read our work, but no one can say the warnings weren’t there for them to read.
These warnings aged well, sadly. It turns out there was a cost to minimizing anti-science disinformation agents and allowing them to infiltrate mainstream medicine. Today, measles is killing babies, Stephen Miller is the new MAHA superstar, and the NY Times is publishing articles titled How Trump Is Dismantling America’s Scientific Research Machine. This is where we are right now, and we didn’t get there overnight. We have more than two more years left to go.
If anything, we underestimated the threat, and I don’t think our insights were particularly brilliant to be honest. MAHA’s risks were blindingly, glaringly obvious and out in the open. It didn’t take a lick of medical training to recognize them. All anyone had to do was pay attention and care. Ignorance and apathy were choices.
For example, Jeff Kunzler, the author the Pandemic Accountability Index, has a background in advertising. However, he carefully tracked and documented pandemic disinformation superspreaders. When Dr. Vinay Prasad was appointed to the FDA in May 2025, Mr. Kunzler wrote an article titled Vinay Prasad is the FDA Chief Medical and Scientific Officer. Here is What You Need to Know. It said:
Vinay Prasad has personally profited from spreading falsehoods about vaccines, masks, and COVID-19 on social media, especially in children. He frequently attacks research and scientists that debunk his absurd claims, refusing to acknowledge that his favorite virus is causing awful harm to children.
That’s 100% true, and Mr. Kunzler made liberal use of my collection of YouTube videos to prove his points. We both agree it’s important for our readers hear Dr. Prasad in his own words.
“Brilliant, analytically rigorous, prolific, passionate about improving the way we generate and apply medical evidence, with intellectual sharpness and a relentless drive to improve science.”
Not everyone saw it that way, however.
Dr. Paul E. Sax is the Bruce A. Beal and Robert L. Beal Endowed Chair in Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the new Editor-in-Chief of the NEJM. As others were loudly warning about Dr. Prasad in May of 2025, Dr. Sax lavished him with glowing praise. Dr. Sax wrote in the NEJM:
His attention-getting posts on COVID-19 reflected someone brilliant, analytically rigorous, prolific, and passionate about improving the way we generate and apply medical evidence…
In short, he has made a career challenging dogma and questioning medical practices that are adopted with too little critical scrutiny. These qualities — intellectual sharpness, a relentless drive to improve science — will serve him well in this important job.
It’s honestly hard to know where to begin with something like this, and SBM readers certainly don’t need another recitation of Dr. Prasad’s voluminous, pro-infection disinformation. As Dr. Ilan Schwartz said about Dr. Prasad in response to Dr. Sax:
He’s a narcissistic contrarian who has embraced antivaccine and anti-public health positions because it scored well on Twitter and earned well on substack. He’s been an obsequious supporter of RFK & the MAHA movement. He’s a fragile ❄️ who blocked most of medtwitter for challenging his disinformation
That’s 100% true. Dr. Prasad never engaged his critics in good faith.
Dr. Prasad was also crystal clear about his intentions to elevate Trump and Kennedy to power. Don’t take my word for it, listen to Dr. Marty Makary reveal it in a rare moment of unfiltered honesty. “Vinay Prasad loves Trump,” said Dr. Makary. “If you listen to his podcasts for the past four years, you’ll see he’s been an ardent supporter of everything President Trump has done and it trying to do.” That’s 100% true.
Dr. Prasad didn’t hide his political agenda at all, and he said obviously absurd things all the time to advance it. Literal volumes have been written on this topic. For example, two years ago, while Kennedy was showing the movie Vaxxed 3: Authorized to Kill, Dr. Prasad wrote an article titled Sabotaging RFK Jr’s Confirmation Will Increase Vaccine Hesitancy. It said:
The best way to curb vaccine hesitancy is to approve RFK Jr, and redirect his energies to generating more data. More data will answer the key questions that remain unanswered: which childhood immunization program is optimal. The worse thing we can do is tank his nomination. Then vaccine hesitancy will explode.
That’s the wisdom and integrity Dr. Prasad brought to his work. He even tried to absolve Kennedy for his role in the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa.
Soon after this, Kennedy, now successfully confirmed as chief of the HHS, responded to a deadly measles outbreak in Texas by claiming the measles vaccine killed children.
Dr. Prasad, furious about “toddlers in masks”, also called for mass purges at the CDC, writing two years ago:
I also said this in my latest YouTube video. I would fire at least ~10000 people (1/4) in the CDC and everyone who touched this decision or didn’t stop it. Anyone working from home should go, as well.
The MAHA/MAGA regime Dr. Prasad enabled carried about this vision, and today the headlines read ‘Zombified’ C.D.C., Hobbled by Cuts, Struggles to Fulfill Scientific Mission. Dr. Sax himself wrote an article titled Watching the Chaos at the CDC — with Sadness and Alarm, after it was too late.
In contrast, if any of this bothers Dr. Prasad, he has kept his thoughts to himself. He’s never expressed any dissatisfaction with the state of STEM under Kennedy or Trump. Why would he? They are doing exactly what he requested.
You wouldn’t learned any of this from reading Dr. Sax’s editorial, however. He didn’t mention any of it. Instead of honestly informing NEJM readers, he said the author of these sentiments was brilliant, analytically rigorous, prolific, passionate about improving the way we generate and apply medical evidence, with intellectual sharpness and a relentless drive to improve science.
“Vinay also embraces a confrontational style, especially in public forums.”
Dr. Sax had some reservations about Dr. Prasad, however. He also said the following:
But there’s another side.
Vinay also embraces a confrontational style, especially in public forums. His sharp critiques can sometimes alienate as much as they illuminate.
This isn’t wrong, but it implies Dr. Prasad had no faults beyond his disordered personality and that his critics were simply sensitive scolds with no broader point to make.
It also understates Dr. Prasad’s abdominal behavior. Dr. Prasad didn’t just have “sharp critiques” and a “confrontational style.” SBM readers will also know that he was vulgar, accusatory, and even vaguely threatening, eager to gin up online mobs against beleaguered scientists and doctors, even those who had received death threats or had anti-vaxxers stalk them at home. You wouldn’t learn any of this from reading Dr. Sax’s editorial, however. He didn’t mention any of it.
“The fear has been fueled by Prasad pushing at least seven senior leaders out of their positions and offering no public explanations to staff or the leaders’ supervisors.”
Dr. Sax concluded by saying:
Ultimately, my deepest hope — and I suspect everyone’s — is that this appointment of Dr. Vinay Prasad leads to a continued focus on improving the safety, efficacy, and public trust in biologics, especially vaccines. We need rigorous science, honest communication, and thoughtful leadership more than ever.
Things didn’t work out that way. With Dr. Prasad in power, the FDA was a dysfunctional soap opera. The headlines read Prasad Under Probe for Promoting Workplace Toxicity, Staffers Say and Under Vinay Prasad, Employees at a Key FDA Center Fear Speaking Out, Look for The Exits. According to that last article:
Dozens of scientists are considering leaving the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, where Prasad serves as director, to escape a work environment that eight agency officials described to STAT as rife with mistrust and paranoia. These officials said staffers are terrified of pushing back on Prasad, lest they face retaliation.
The fear has been fueled by Prasad pushing at least seven senior leaders out of their positions, employees told STAT, and offering no public explanations to staff or the leaders’ supervisors. Some of his workers are fed up, and are attempting to transfer to the FDA’s drug center. Prasad has tried to block these transfers in apparent recognition that CBER can’t afford to lose many more employees. The center has lost hundreds of employees since the start of this year to retirements, layoffs, and resignations, and hiring conditions are difficult.
“He’s wreaking havoc with the staff,” one agency official said. “People are terrified.”
No one who was familiar with Dr. Prasad’s track record was surprised by any of this.
“What a great example to set for future doctors and scientists!”
Dr. Sax was hardly alone in sanitizing and whitewashing the atrocious track-record of MAHA/MAGA doctors. Many other doctors also portrayed Dr. Prasad as a reliable, neutral arbiter of data and science at the same time Dr. Prasad was pushing rank MAHA/MAGA propaganda, often in juvenile, vulgar tirades. Several of them lashed out at those of us warned of him and deliberately sought to undermine our message without ever once engaging with it.
Dr. Sax never did that, and my aim here is not to single him out. He was just one of many of Very Serious Medical Leaders who had both the opportunity and obligation to clearly call out MAHA/MAGA disinformation doctors and failed. They had a duty to warn but instead rolled out the red carpet to them and numbed the public to their risk.
Hopefully, future leaders will simply tell the truth. Bloggers with no medical training shouldn’t be more reliable and forthright than prestigious doctors from prestigious universities writing in prestigious medical journals. As Mr. Kunzler sarcastically said 1.5 years ago:
So, Marty Makary has installed UCSF oncologist and social media grifter Vinay Prasad at the FDA. Congratulations to the administration of the University of California San Francisco for refusing to uphold professional standards and let an anti-vaccine social media grifter run rampant in their halls for years, spreading dangerous falsehoods for personal profit. What a great example to set for future doctors and scientists!
Indeed.