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(Reuters) - Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald, formerly headed by the Trump administration's Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, called for the dismissal of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy, a well-known vaccine skeptic, last week announced plans to reshape the federal public health agencies, a move that could involve firing thousands of workers.
Cantor analysts Josh Schimmer and Eric Schmidt said in a note on Monday that Kennedy was "undermining the trusted leadership of health care in this country. HHS cannot be led by an anti-vax, conspiracy theorist with inadequate training."
The note came after reports that the Food and Drug Administration's top vaccine official, Peter Marks, was forced to resign, the highest-profile exit at the regulator amid the Trump administration's health agency overhaul.
Lutnick, Cantor's CEO for 40 years, stepped down last month to run Trump's commerce department. His sons, Brandon and Kyle Lutnick took over as chairman and executive vice chairman of the brokerage, respectively.
"The views expressed in our Equity Research reports are solely those of the analyst(s). As always, we pride ourselves on the independence of the analysts within our Research division," Cantor Fitzgerald said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
The ouster of Marks led to a decline in biotech and vaccine stocks on Monday. The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF closed down 3.9%.
The Cantor analysts noted the fall in the stocks, but said their note had nothing to do with politics, stocks and biopharmaceutical sales, but with keeping lives out of jeopardy.
They said they had learned from sources that Marks, who was willing to stay at the FDA, took a scientifically driven review of vaccine safety and did not yield to an anti-science agenda that undermined public health. The same could not be said about Kennedy, they said.
The analysts also said the "administration has shown an ability to correct course, to compromise and to make changes where needed," adding they are "hopeful that the leaders in Washington will recognize and appreciate the benefits that vaccines can and should play in protecting U.S. citizens."
(Reporting by Puyaan Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Alan Barona)
