Former director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluations and Research on measles vaccine, RFK Jr. and autism

WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Dr. Peter Marks, Former Director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday to discuss the measles vaccine.

According to Brennan, the CDC is recommending people to take additional measles shots if they're traveling within the U.S., "specifically to the states of Kansas and Texas due to record outbreaks."

However, Brennan said the guidance wasn't on their website, but was told to local authorities, prompting her to ask Dr. Marks what he makes of the public health guidance, and he responded saying:

"What I make of that is that we have enough spread of measles and some uncertainty in people's vaccination status that they're trying to make sure that people are as protected as they can be. Some people who were vaccinated, for instance, for a period in the early 60s, they may not be fully vaccinated in the extent that the vaccine was not as good back then. So sometimes we ask them to get revaccinated and additionally, some people don't know their vaccination status. So better to be safe than to put yourself at risk, because...[the MMR vaccine is] one of the safer vaccines that we have. In fact, it is possibly characterized as among the safest vaccines that we have."

During the interview, Brennan and Marks talked about HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said, "I'm not gonna take people's vaccines away from them. What I'm gonna do is make sure that we have good science so that people can make an informed choice."

When asked if Kennedy's comments is a "sufficient endorsement," Marks said:

"So I'm not going to comment to that, but I'm going to tell you as a public health professional. I'm going to tell you what an endorsement of the measles vaccine sounds like right now. If you can hear my voice right now, and you have a child that is unvaccinated against measles, we have measles spreading in this country very significantly. You wouldn't put your child in a back seat of a car without being strapped into their car seat. You want to get your child vaccinated against measles so that they don't have a one in a thousand chance of dying from measles if they contract it. There's no reason to put your child at that risk, because the vaccine does not cause death, it does not cause encephalitis and it does not cause autism. So a vaccine that is safe, yes, occasionally kids get fevers. If you don't keep the fevers down, about 15 in 100,000 will get a convulsion that happens once it goes away. But if you take their temperatures, keep it down, that's unlikely. And the other four or five side effects per 100,000 are ones that come and go. So, very safe vaccine that is going to potentially protect your child and save its life. And there's just- the issue here is we should love our children enough that if you care about your child, just like you'd strap them in that car seat, you're going to get them vaccinated with two doses of the measles vaccine. They will be well protected against this. Once you've had two doses of the measles vaccine, it's virtually unheard of that a child dies of measles. Three or four percent may get the measles, but it's not a life threatening illness, so it's really important to get vaccinated. Get your child vaccinated if you need to, you have questions, ask your pediatrician, ask your healthcare provider. If you have religious objections or issues, go to your clergy member, because most major religions actually understand how important vaccination is, and they will go ahead and tell you that it's okay to get vaccinated. So that's what an endorsement sounds like. Just make the comparison."

Later in the interview, Brennan and Marks talked about the allegations of the MMR vaccine causing autism, with the CDC reporting one in 36 American children being diagnosed with autism.

Last week, Secretary Kennedy said he has "hundreds of scientists from around the world" working on the cause of autism, and said he will know what caused the "autism epidemic" by September so they can "be able to eliminate those exposures."

This prompted Brennan to ask Marks if he knew anything about the ongoing research, to which Marks answered saying:

" I know a minimal amount of effort that's being going on to try to relook at prior autism research, but I'm not aware of what is being discussed there. And I would just say the following- so I'm somebody who in my career as a physician taking care of patients- and there are people probably who are hearing me now who know that I cared for leukemia patients for a significant number of years. Giving people false hope is something you should never do. It is absolutely...you can be incredibly supportive of people, but giving them false hope is wrong...Unless somebody actually knows the answer or has a pretty good idea of the answer right now, or thinks they have a good idea of the answer, I don't see how one could have...as a scientist, I'm not speaking about anything. If you just ask me, as a scientist, is it possible to get the answer that quickly? I don't see any possible way. And remember, you're talking to the person who came up with Operation Warp Speed for vaccines. Autism is an incredibly complicated issue, so we have the issue of diagnosis bias. We don't know how many of those cases are true...how much of this is true growth of autism, how much of this is just that we now have diagnostic criteria and we diagnose it more often."

When asked if there's scientific evidence to rule out genetics as a cause for autism, Marks said while there isn't, "there's data that [has] been published [saying that] genetics may contribute to autism."

To watch Brennan's full interview with Marks, click here.