By Josh Nathan-Kazis

Two top Wall Street analysts are calling on the White House to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, saying he is "undermining public health."

The new research note from Cantor Fitzgerald biotechnology analysts Josh Schimmer and Eric Schmidt was spurred by the surprise resignation of Dr. Peter Marks, a top Food and Drug Administration official responsible for regulating vaccines.

The analysts said Monday that the forced departure of Marks, who led the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, had been a "step too far for us."

"RFK Jr. is undermining the trusted leadership of healthcare in this country," they wrote. "HHS cannot be led by an anti-vax, conspiracy theorist with inadequate training."

"We together feel that this is an attack on science, an attack on the normal process of government reviews by a nonscientist, and it's a very, very slippery slope from here into a dangerous place," Schmidt told Barron's in an interview on Monday. "It's about the science. Its bigger than profits. Its bigger than politics. It's human lives. That's where we're coming from."

In his resignation letter on Friday, Marks said that he had been willing to work to address Kennedy's concerns about the safety of vaccines, but that Kennedy "wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies."

Marks's letter pointed to apparent efforts by Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, to use his role at HHS to promote vaccine skepticism. In their Monday note, Schimmer and Schmidt said that drugmakers needed to speak out against Kennedy.

"This has nothing to do with biopharmaceutical sales," they wrote. "Several industry leaders have been playing nice with the administration in an effort to protect their businesses. It's time to take a stand against something that is more important than bottom lines.

Schimmer and Schmidt are two of the best-known investment bank analysts covering biotechnology stocks. They both joined Cantor from Evercore ISI in 2023, and each has covered biotechnology stocks for more than 20 years.

Their note was far from the usual fare distributed by sell-side biotechnology analysts. Other analyst notes Monday voiced varying degrees of alarm about Marks, but most focused on near-term impacts on stocks. Schimmer and Schmidt's note went much farther.

Schmidt told Barron's that the industry groups that represent drugmakers -- BIO, and PhRMA -- have looked to negotiate with the administration. "I think we're past that, in my opinion," he said. "I think the administration has played those industry groups."

Neither BIO nor PhRMA immediately responded to a request for comment on Schmidt and Schimmer's note. In a statement Saturday, BIO's president and CEO John Crowley had said his group was concerned that the "loss of experienced leadership at the FDA will erode scientific standards" and impact the development of new drugs.

"If you care about the industry, if you care about healthcare in America, you should be very, very disturbed by what happened on Friday evening," Schmidt told Barron's.

A spokesman for HHS said the agency had no comment on the analysts' note.

The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF, which tracks biotechnology stocks, is down 4.0% on Monday afternoon.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com

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March 31, 2025 15:04 ET (19:04 GMT)

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