Vinay Prasad vs. transgender people

Vinay Prasad is an American physician and anti-transgender activist. Prasad has attacked the American Academy of Pediatrics and has published other anti-trans activists, including J. Michael Bailey, Aida Cerundolo, and Benjamin Ryan.

Background

Vinayak “Vinay” Kashyap Prasad was born in December 1982 to Ram and Padma Rasad and grew up outside Cleveland, Ohio. Prasad earned a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University in 2005, then earned a medical degree from University of Chicago in 2009, followed by a residency at Northwestern University. Prasad earned a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in 2014, followed by a a fellowships in oncology at the National Cancer Institute and hematology at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Prasad was a professor at the Oregon Health & Science University from 2015 to 2020, then took a position at University of California, San Francisco. In 2021, Prasad compared U.S. COVID-19 pandemic response to the beginnings of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. This and other views led to interest fromconservatives and from the Trump Administration. Prasad left UCSF to work at FDA in 2025 as Chief Medical and Scientific Office and director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). In May 2025, Prasad and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary published an article in The New England Journal of Medicine announcing that FDA would limit COVID-19 vaccines to people over 65 or at high risk of serious illness. Prasad lasted only three months at FDA.

Anti-trans activism

Prasad has attacked the American Academy of Pediatrics “due to overconfidence; making recommendations when the right action would be to express uncertainty and support efforts to collect better data.” This echoes attacks on AAP by opponents of gender-affirming care for minors.

“The reason to trust modern doctors over ancient healers is that more of what we tell you to do is justified by well-done studies. But how do we hold that perch when we just make stuff up?”

Prasad edits the group blog Sensible Medicine with John Mandrola and Adam Cifu. Frequent contributors include anti-trans psychiatrist Sally Satel.

The 2025 US HHS report attacking gender-affirming care for minors quotes from the 2015 book Ending Medical Reversal by Prasad and Cifu to suggest that current medical consensus on that care is a “fad”: “You might be worried that some medical practices are nothing more than fads. In some cases, you would be right.”

References

Sax, Paul E. (August 2, 2025). The Short Political Half-life of a Medical Contrarian. NEJM Journal Watch https://blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-observations/index.php/the-short-political-half-life-of-a-medical-contrarian/2025/08/02/

Lowe, Derek (July 30, 2025). Vinay Prasad: That Was Fast. Science https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vinay-prasad-was-fast

Jewett, Christina (July 29, 2025). Top F.D.A. Official Resigns Under Pressure. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/health/vinay-prasad-fda-resigns-loomer.html

Levine, Dan; Steenhuysen, Julie (May 7, 2025). US FDA names agency critic Vinay Prasad as top vaccine official. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-fda-names-agency-critic-vinay-prasad-top-vaccine-official-2025-05-06/

Terry, Lynne (September 7, 2017). Dr. Vinay Prasad, OHSU’s iconoclastic oncologist, calls out shoddy medicine. The Oregonian https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2017/09/dr_vinay_prasad_ohsus_iconocla.html

Coverage in anti-trans press

Sibarium, Aaron (December 7, 2022). The Hijacking of Pediatric Medicine. The Free Press https://www.thefp.com/p/the-hijacking-of-pediatric-medicine alt url at The Free Beacon https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/the-hijacking-of-pediatric-medicine/

Excerpted as Sibarium, Aaron (December 7, 2022). Pediatric group says kids should talk to their parents about tattoos — but not puberty blockers. New York Post https://nypost.com/2022/12/07/pediatric-group-says-kids-should-not-talk-to-parents-about-puberty-blockers/

Sapir, Leor (Winter 2022). ‘Trust the Experts’ Is Not Enough: U.S. Medical Groups Get the Science Wrong on Pediatric ‘Gender Affirming’ Care. Manhattan Institute https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/how-to-respond-to-medical-authorities_claiming_gender_affirming_care_safe.pdf

Selected anti-trans writing published by Prasad

Bailey, Michael (September 29, 2024). The Rapid Ideological Retraction of a Scientific Article on Rapid Onset‑Gender Dysphoria. Sensible Medicine https://www.sensible-med.com/p/the-rapid-ideological-retraction

Barnes, Elizabeth (June 25, 2024). Sex, Gender, and Language in Public Health Communication. Sensible Medicine https://www.sensible-med.com/p/sex-gender-and-language-in-public

Ryan, Benjamin (November 2023). Pediatric Gender Medicine: Dispatches From a Deceptive Medical Field. Sensible Medicine https://www.sensible-med.com/p/pediatric-gender-medicine-dispatches

Lipfert, Colton; Ryan, Benjamin (November 21, 2024). Pediatric Gender Medicine: Lipfert replies, Ryan responds. Sensible Medicine https://www.sensible-med.com/p/pediatric-gender-medicine

Curlin, Farr (July 23, 2023). Medicalized Gender Transition and the Silence of Medicine and Bioethics. Sensible Medicine https://www.sensible-med.com/p/medicalized-gender-transition-and

Cerundolo, Aida (January 04, 2023). What Happens in Classrooms Shouldn’t Stay in Classrooms. Sensible Medicine https://www.sensible-med.com/p/what-happens-in-classrooms-shouldnt

Prasad, Vinay (August 27, 2022). The AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) is broken, failed organization. Sensible Medicine https://www.sensible-med.com/p/the-aap-american-academy-of-pediatrics

Prasad, V., Vandross, A., Toomey, C., Cheung, M., Rho, J., Quinn, S., Chacko, S. J., Borkar, D., Gall, V., Selvaraj, S., Ho, N., & Cifu, A. (2013). A Decade of Reversal: An Analysis of 146 Contradicted Medical Practices. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 88(8), 790–798. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mayocp.2013.05.012

Books

Prasad, Vinayak K (2020). Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer. Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 978-1421437637

Prasad, Vinayak K.; Cifu, Adam S. (2015). Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives. Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 978-1421417721