Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, a frequent critic of the FDA and COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccination policies, will be the next director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the center that oversees vaccine approvals.

Not Vinay Prasad. The new top regulator of vaccines and gene therapies at the Food and Drug Administration has never shied away from speaking his mind — whether in academic papers, on social media, or on a diary-esque Substack called “Vinay Prasad’s Observations and Thoughts.”

The UCSF professor and frequent YouTube poster has criticized COVID-19 vaccine mandates as well as the accelerated approval pathway and other FDA practices. Predictions of what his tenure might achieve are scattershot.