Embattled FDA official defends vaccine plan in closed

NEW YORK — Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccines regulator, blamed “misleading media narratives” for the escalating criticism of his leadership amid turmoil and plummeting morale at the agency.

Prasad’s remarks, delivered Thursday at a New York investor conference closed to the public and press, came a day after 12 former FDA commissioners published an urgent warning that his proposed changes to vaccine policy would have dire consequences for American public health.

Prasad, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research as well as the agency’s chief medical and scientific officer, defended his plan, which would require manufacturers to conduct longer and larger studies before updating vaccines, as a matter of modernizing FDA policy. “We’re not ta