Free Republic

Vinay Prasad is returning to the Food and Drug Administration to resume his role overseeing vaccine, gene therapy, and blood product regulation. “At the FDA’s request, Dr. Vinay Prasad is resuming leadership of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research,” Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon told STAT on Saturday.

...Some of Loomer’s erstwhile political allies are starting to wonder if there might be a hidden hand behind some of her most influential denunciations. Sommer says the firing in question involves last Tuesday’s ouster of Dr. Vinay Prasad as the head of a key treatment-approval division of the Food and Drug Administration. Prasad was a hero in Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA movement because of his criticism of pandemic measures. But Loomer accused Prasad of disloyalty to Trump — even claiming that Prasad had admitted to having a Trump voodoo doll. Stat News reports...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's top vaccine official, Vinay Prasad, has left the agency after just three months as Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, a government spokesperson said. Prasad, an oncologist who was a fierce critic of U.S. COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates, had been appointed in May by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. Together they had promised to speed regulatory action and pilot new review pathways. In recent days, criticism of Prasad's tenure has intensified around the agency's handling of a gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy from Sarepta Therapeutics (SRPT.O), opens new tab. The...

The CDC found itself hoist with its own petard by making 25 basic statistical and numerical errors related to COVID-19, particularly with regard to children, while purporting to expose COVID vaccine misinformation, according to an analysis led by University of California San Francisco epidemiologists. The preprint, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, documented 20 errors that "exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation" and three that "simultaneously exaggerated and downplayed" severity, while one each was neutral or exaggerated vaccine risks. More than half were from 2022, but nearly as many were made in the first two months of 2023 as...

Assailant beaten, may not make it Former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad received a bullet injury in his left arm on Thursday when a gunman opened fire on the dais from which he had just finished addressing an election rally at Nokha, about 25 km from Sasaram. The assailant fired several shots from a country-made handgun at around 2 p.m. before he was overpowered by BJP workers. Eyewitnesses said the man was carrying a second pistol which he could not fire. He was identified as Munna Rai, alias Halchal Rai, of Karahasi village under Nokha police station of Sasaram. Rohtas...

Oct. 10, 2003 India signs $1b PHALCON arms deal By ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW DELHI, India India, Israel and Russia on Friday signed an agreement for the US$1 billion sale of PHALCON airborne early warning systems to India, a defense official told The Associated Press. India's rival, Pakistan, has said the system would upset the balance of power in South Asia, where the two major powers have fought three wars since 1947 and now have nuclear weapons. The advanced Israeli-made PHALCON radar systems are to be fitted on converted Russian-made Ilyushin transport plane that India will purchase from Moscow. The deal,...