The FDA Is Suppressing Its Own Safety Research — And Nobody Is in Charge
The Food and Drug Administration blocked the publication of two studies showing that COVID and shingles vaccines are safe, fired its own scientists for running the studies, and is now facing the firing of its commissioner for not being obedient enough to the White House. If you wanted to design a system that maximizes public confusion while minimizing accountability, this is what it would look like.
The Guardian and Ars Technica both reported this week that the FDA has entered a terminal dysfunction spiral. Commissioner Marty Makary — the man Trump chose to run the agency — is reportedly on “thin ice,” described by Bloomberg as “an embattled, paranoid leader” who is “one more high-profile misstep” away from losing his job. Trump has signed off on a plan to remove him, though insiders say the decision could still change.
The trigger appears to be vaping. Trump reportedly “upbraided” Makary over the weekend for not approving fruit-flavored vapes fast enough. Makary had overridden agency scientists to halt the approval out of concern that the flavors could attract underage users. After White House pressure, the vapes were approved Tuesday. The news release did not include any comment from Makary — an unusual omission that tells you where the power sits.
The Bigger Pattern: Research Suppression
The vaping fight is the headline, but it’s not the most important development. The more consequential story is the suppression of vaccine safety research.
An FDA official, identified by Stat News as Vinay Prasad — now the top U.S. vaccines regulator — decided to pull a study showing that “the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks” after it had already been accepted by the journal Vaccine. A separate study on shingles vaccine safety was also pulled.
Angela Rasmussen, co-editor of the journal and a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, said: “I think we’re going to start seeing a big pattern of this. It just seems like this is the tip of the iceberg, and the FDA is just a complete mess.”
This is not a scientific dispute. The studies were internally generated, validated through normal processes, and accepted for peer review. They were stopped from the top because the conclusions were politically inconvenient under an administration that appointed anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run HHS.
Who Benefits From the Chaos
The conventional narrative is that this is ideological: anti-vax politics versus science. But the deeper incentive story is about institutional capture. The FDA exists to serve as a predictable, apolitical referee. Drug development is a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar process. Industry, researchers, and the public all depend on the agency making decisions based on evidence rather than weekend phone calls from the president.
“Public trust is built up not over months, but over decades. On the other hand, you can destroy it in mere months,” said Peter Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a former FDA associate commissioner.
Who benefits when the referee becomes unpredictable? Not the public, who need to trust that approved drugs are safe and that blocked drugs are blocked for real reasons. Not the scientists, who are now uncertain whether publishing research will end their careers. The beneficiaries are the actors — political and commercial — who prefer an agency too chaotic to exercise independent judgment.
Meanwhile, Republican Senator Ron Johnson is investigating the FDA for rejecting rare disease treatments. Representative LaHood is pressuring for faster drug approvals. The pharmaceutical industry is complaining. The whole system is organized around stripping the FDA of its ability to say no — except when “no” serves political goals like blocking vaccine safety data.
The Second-Order Consequence
When citizens cannot trust the FDA’s word, they stop taking medications, skip vaccines, and turn to unregulated alternatives. That is not a hypothetical future. It is happening right now, measurably, in vaccination rates and public health surveys. The institutional breakdown creates a void that charlatans, supplement companies, and political operatives rush to fill.
The FDA may be, as one expert put it, “incredibly boring” to most people. But boring is exactly what a drug regulator should be. When it becomes exciting, people die.
Sources: The Guardian, “The FDA is a complete mess,” by Melody Schreiber, May 9, 2026; Ars Technica, “Trump reportedly plans to fire FDA Commissioner Marty Makary,” by Beth Mole, May 8, 2026.