WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has assembled a team of medical opponents and health care critics to fulfill an agenda aimed at changing the way the federal government oversees drugs, health programs and nutrition.
On Tuesday evening, Trump nominated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health, tapping an opponent of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates to lead the nation’s top medical research agency. He is the latest in a line of Trump nominees who have been critics of COVID-19 health measures.
Bhattacharya and the other nominees are expected to play a critical role in implementing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sweeping “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, which calls for removing thousands of additives from American foods, eradicating of conflicts of interest at agencies and the promotion of healthier food. in school lunches and other nutrition programs. Trump nominated Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH and other federal health agencies.
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The new health priorities bear little resemblance to those of Trump’s first term, which focused on reducing regulations on food, drug and agricultural companies.
“You’re hearing a very different tune as we enter this new Trump administration,” said Gabby Headrick, a nutrition researcher at George Washington University’s school of public health. “It is important that we all proceed with caution and remember some of the public health losses we saw the first time around.”
Trump’s picks have no experience running large bureaucratic agencies, but they know how to talk about health on TV.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid choose Dr. Mehmet Oz hosted a talk show for 13 years and is a well-known influencer on wellness and lifestyle. Food and Drug Administration pick Dr. Marty Makary and surgeon general Dr. Janette Nesheiwat are frequent Fox News contributors.
Some of them have ties to Florida, as do many of Trump’s other Cabinet nominees: Dave Weldon, the pick for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, represented the state in Congress for 14 years.
Here’s a look at how the nominees could carry out Kennedy’s plans to “reorganize” agencies, which have a total budget of $1.7 trillion and employ 80,000 scientists, researchers, physicians and other officials:
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health, with a budget of $48 billion, funds medical research through grants to scientists across the country and conducts its own research.
Bhattacharya, a health economist and physician at Stanford University, was one of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 letter that said lockdowns were causing irreparable damage.
The document – which emerged before the availability of COVID-19 vaccines – promoted “herd immunity,” the idea that low-risk people should live normally while building immunity to COVID-19 through infection. Protection should instead focus on people at higher risk, the document said.
“I think the lockdowns were the biggest public health mistake,” Bhattacharya said in March 2021 during a panel discussion convened by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The Great Barrington Declaration was embraced by some in the first Trump administration, even as it was widely denounced by disease experts. Then-NIH director Dr. Francis Collins called it dangerous and ‘not mainstream science’.
His nomination would have to be approved by the Senate.
Kennedy has said he would end NIH drug development and infectious disease research and shift its focus to chronic diseases. He is also keen to keep NIH funding away from researchers with conflicts of interest. In 2017, he said the agency wasn’t doing enough research into the role of vaccines in autism — an idea that has long been debunked.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Atlanta-based CDC, with a core budget of $9.2 billion, is charged with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats.
Kennedy has long attacked vaccines and criticized the CDC, repeatedly alleging corruption at the agency. He said on a 2023 podcast that there is “no vaccine that is safe and effective,” and urged people to resist CDC guidance on whether and when to vaccinate children. The World Health Organization estimates that vaccines have saved more than 150 million lives. the last 50 years, and that 100 million of them were babies.
Decades ago, Kennedy found common ground with Weldonwho served in the Army and worked as an internist before representing a central Florida congressional district from 1995 to 2009.
Beginning in the early 2000s, Weldon played a prominent role in a debate over whether there was a link between a vaccine preservative called thimerosal and autism. He was a founding member of the Congressional Autism Caucus and sought to ban thimerosal from all vaccines.
Since 2001, all vaccines manufactured for the U.S. market and routinely recommended for children six years of age or younger have contained no thimerosal or only trace amounts, with the exception of the inactivated influenza vaccine. Meanwhile, study after study found no evidence that thimerosal caused autism.
Weldon’s congressional election results indicate he could join Republican efforts to shrink the CDC, including eliminating the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which deals with issues such as drownings, drug overdoses and shootings.
Food and Drug Administration
Kennedy has been highly critical of the FDA, which has 18,000 employees and is responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs, vaccines and other medical products, as well as overseeing cosmetics, electronic cigarettes and most foods.
Makary, Trump’s pick to lead the FDA, is a professor at Johns Hopkins University, a trained surgeon and a cancer specialist. He is closely associated with Kennedy on several issues.
Makary has criticized the overprescribing of drugs, the use of pesticides on food and the influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies over doctors and government agencies.
Kennedy has suggested he will purge “entire” FDA departments and also recently threatened to fire FDA employees for “aggressively suppressing” a host of unsubstantiated products and therapies, including stem cells, raw milk, psychedelics and discredited treatments from the COVID era, such as hydroxychloroquine.
Makary’s opposing views during COVID-19 include questioning the need for COVID-19 vaccine boosters in young children.
Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services
The agency provides health care coverage for more than 160 million people through Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, and also sets Medicare payment rates for hospitals, physicians and other health care providers. With a $1.1 trillion budget and more than 6,000 employees, Oz will have a huge agency to run if confirmed — and one that Kennedy hasn’t talked about much.
While Trump tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act during his first term, Kennedy has not yet set a goal for that.
The Biden administration unveiled a new plan Tuesday to force Medicare and Medicaid to cover weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound for many Americans who are obese. Kennedy has opposed the idea, saying government-sponsored insurance programs should instead expand coverage of healthier foods and gym memberships.
Trump said during his campaign that he would protect Medicare, an insurance policy for older Americans. Oz has approved the expansion of Medicare Advantage – a private version of Medicare that is popular but also a source of widespread fraud.
Surgeon General
Kennedy doesn’t appear to have said much publicly about what he would like to see from the surgeon general.
The country’s top doctor has little administrative power, but can influence what qualifies as a public health hazard and what should be done about it, by suggesting things like product warning labels and issuing advisories. The current surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, declared gun violence a public health crisis in June.
Trump’s pick, Nesheiwat, serves as medical director in New York City at CityMD, a group of urgent care facilities. She has also appeared on Fox News and other TV shows, written a book about the “transformative power of prayer” in her medical career, and endorses a brand of vitamin supplements.
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Associated Press writers Mike Stobbe, Amanda Seitz, Carla K. Johnson, Matthew Perrone and Erica Hunzinger contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
