During recent testimony, U.S. Food and Drug Administration scientist Dr. Peter Marks admitted Biden administration officials pressured the agency to approve Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to “allow vaccine mandates to occur.”
A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee is investigating whether the Biden administration improperly pressured U.S. health regulators to accelerate approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in 2021.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, renewed a request he previously submitted in September 2023 for information after recent congressional testimony raised more questions about the vaccine approval timeline.
In a letter to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf Thursday, Wenstrup cited testimony from a Feb. 15 hearing in which Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, suggested the agency faced pressure to quickly approve the Pfizer vaccine to facilitate federal vaccine mandates.
During the hearing, Marks stated, “There was an acknowledgment that an approval could allow vaccine mandates to occur.”