FDA’s ‘key man’ Peter Marks is out. Biotech investors will now deal with the consequences

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. forcing Peter Marks out of the Meals and Drug Administration has blown a gap within the company’s management ranks and threatens to unmoor the oversight of medication and vaccines from bedrock scientific ideas.

For biotech buyers, Marks’ ouster is a worst-case situation realized — an FDA riven by dysfunction and uncertainty. And it comes at a time when the sector is already struggling by means of a years-long public markets droop.

A disaster in confidence on the FDA is doubtlessly calamitous. Investing in biopharma firms turns into exceedingly tough if the regulatory company in control of evaluating and approving life-saving (and money-making) medicines stops following predictable, well-established requirements.