On the Friday after Thanksgiving 2025, Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, who was then the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) sent a memo to staff. “For the first time,” Prasad wrote, “the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children.” He said no fewer than 10 of 96 pediatric deaths reported to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) from 2021 to 2024 were caused by COVID-19 vaccination. He said the coding was conservative. He said the actual number was higher. The memo offered no clinical evidence. It accused the FDA of a years-long failure to acknowledge what new leadership had now uncovered.
The underlying analysis has now been revealed.