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# Top FDAer Quits Operation Warp Speed
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/top-fdaer-quits-operation-warp-speed/
- Published: 2020-06-04T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T16:17:07.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Biologics, FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5146937

Days after CBER director **Peter Marks** joined the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed project to develop a coronavirus vaccine, he left the group to resume his full-time work at FDA. In a lengthy article based on anonymous interviews with current and former HHS and other officials, *Politico* says Marks left Operation Warp Speed after clashing with coronavirus coordinator **Deborah Birx** over how the government was prioritizing funding for various vaccine candidates.

A memo to FDA staff said Marks was returning to CBER because the White House had assembled enough other experts to do the job. “That was nonsense,” said a current administration official who was familiar with Marks’ thinking. “He actually quit in disgust.” The article reports that Marks and Birx have since resolved their dust-up.

In a separate statement to *Politico*, Marks said, “I believe that the American public will be best served by my return full-time to FDA, where I can continue to work collaboratively with industry, government partners, and other researchers and provide regulatory advice to expedite the development of availability of vaccines to combat Covid-19.”

Much of the article looks at the Marks case as part of a bigger struggle to fight political pressure from the White House and other directions during a search for a coronavirus cure and vaccine.

“The unprecedented effort by the White House to intercede at an agency that’s supposed to make independent judgments based on medical science is raising alarms among health experts inside and outside the administration,” *Politico* says. It says that several of the current or former senior HHS officials it spoke with expressed concerns that FDA commissioner **Stephen Hahn**, who was confirmed just one month before the virus reached the U.S., “has not been a strong enough voice for an agency charged with regulating drugs and vaccines. Some acknowledged frictions between FDA officials and White House and coronavirus task force members. These factors could complicate crucial choices FDA will make in coming months about which drugs or shots reach the public.”

In a statement, Hahn denied that political pressure had influenced the agency’s coronavirus response. “FDA has remained an unwavering, science-based voice helping to guide the all-of-government response,” he told *Politico*. “I have never felt any pressure to make decisions, other than the urgency of the situation around Covid-19.”