FDA official demands removal of YouTube videos of himself criticizing vaccines

Summary

A top official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demanded the removal of YouTube videos of himself that were published by a physician and writer who has been critical of medical misinformation and public health officials in the Trump administration, according to a YouTube notice that was seen by the Guardian.Jonathan Howard, a neurologist and psychiatrist in New York City, received an email from YouTube on Friday night, which stated that Vinay Prasad, who is the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, had demanded the removal of six videos of himself from Howard’s YouTube channel.Howard’s entire channel has now been deleted by YouTube, which cited copyright infringement.The now-defunct channel contained about 350 videos of doctors and commentators, including Prasad, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of health and human services, and Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the National Institutes of Health, which had been collected by Howard from their social media accounts, interviews and podcasts.Creating the channel, Howard told Guardian in an interview, had been an attempt to “preserve” what these individuals had said during the early years of the pandemic, including comments that Howard said exaggerated the dangers of the Covid vaccine to children and – in some cases – minimized the risk of Covid infection, among other issues.“These videos were nothing more than collections of what other doctors said during the pandemic, including doctors who are extremely influential and who are now the medical establishment,” he said.The Guardian requested a comment from the office of public affairs at the department of health and human services, and attempted to reach Prasad through personal email addresses and by a listed mobile phone number. No one responded to the request for comment.When YouTube notified Howard of the demand request, it included an email address for Prasad, which is identical to the email address that is linked to Prasad’s now inactive podcast, called Plenary Session...