A top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) abruptly resigned last week after reportedly being told he could either quit or be fired.
Dr. Peter Marks is now the third top official to leave the FDA this year, and this all comes as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced major layoffs at the agency.
“We have over 100 comms departments. We have 40 procurement departments. We have dozens of IT departments, dozens of HR departments. None of them talk to each other,” RFK Jr. told NewsNation’s “CUOMO” on March 27.
He added at the time, “What we’re trying to do now is to streamline the agency … so that everybody who is at HHS is going to wake up every morning and say, ‘What am I going to do today to make America healthy again?’”
The department will operate with 62,000 positions instead of 82,000. Along with the layoffs, an additional 10,000 workers are either taking early retirement or voluntary separation offers.
What is Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda all about?
“What’s happening … is a reflection of the sprawling bureaucracy that’s actually making America sick and costing hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars,” said Dr. Mark Hyman, co-founder and chief medical officer of Function and Health and the founder of Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, on “NewsNation Now.”
Hyman added that there is a need to address “the fundamental issue, which is why are so many people sick in the first place? Why have we seen disease rates skyrocket over the last 50 years?”
Reforming the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, banning artificial food dyes and addressing rising rates of medical diagnoses, such as diabetes in kids, are part of the MAHA initiatives.
“We’re basically funding a disease creation system at every level,” the doctor said. “We need to fund a health promotion system, and that’s what I think this administration is attempting to do.”
