An Interview with the FDA's Vaccines Czar

In this newsletter: Just the facts.

On Vaccines, The Buck Stops With Peter Marks

No multi-part absurdities this week. Just a link to a feature up this weekend in Barron’s on the official at the Food and Drug Administration who decides which Covid-19 vaccines you can take, when.

Dr. Peter Marks was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., a borough not known for its mariners, but somewhere along the way to becoming a top pharmaceutical regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, he developed a taste for boats.

Marks now owns one, a 37-year-old Danish-built sloop named Linnea that he calls a “project boat.” He has been fixing it up for years, and sails it out in the shallow waters of the Chesapeake Bay. “It’s not really perfect for the Chesapeake because it’s got a very deep keel, but it is what it is,” he says.

Marks says that sailing is “freeing,” but when he goes out in Linnea, he’s always considering what could go wrong. “I am very careful about my risk-benefit decisions,” he says. “I did not make them well when I started sailing 30 years ago, and once or twice I got caught in very, very bad weather doing very stupid things.”

In his day job at the FDA, where he wields enormous authority over the approval of Covid-19 vaccines and boosters, Marks weighs costs and benefits, too. There, the implications of his decisions go well beyond the well-being of Linnea and its crew.

The rest is here. Also from this week, an interview with Pfizer’s science chief on the authorization of their Covid-19 pill. And, what the authorization means for Pfizer, and for Merck.

That’s all I’ve got! Thanks for reading.

Josh