Meet the medical dissidents appointed to lead health care organizations under Trump and Kennedy

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has assembled a group of medical opponents and health care critics to implement a plan aimed at overhauling how the federal government oversees medicine, health programs and nutrition.

On Tuesday night, Trump nominated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health, tapped an opponent of the pandemic shutdown and vaccine mandates to head the national center for medical research. He is the latest in a string of Trump nominees who have been critics of the COVID-19 health measures.

Bhattacharya and other candidates are expected to play a key role in implementing Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” plan, which calls for the removal of thousands of additives from US food, eliminating corporate conflicts of interest and promoting a healthy diet. in school meals and other nutrition programs. Trump nominated Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH and other health agencies.

Health priorities are not much like those of Trump’s first term, which focused on reducing regulations for food, drug and agriculture companies.

“You hear a very different tone as we go into this new Trump administration,” said Gabby Headrick, a nutrition researcher at George Washington University’s school of public health. “It’s important that we all proceed with caution and remember some of the health losses that we saw the first time.”

Trump’s nominees don’t have experience running big administrations, but they know how to talk about health on television.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid select Dr. Mehmet Oz hosted a talk show for 13 years and is a well-known health and lifestyle influencer. Choice for Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary, and for the surgeon, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, is a frequent contributor to Fox News.

Some of them have ties to Florida like some of Trump’s Cabinet nominees: Dave Weldon, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nominee, has represented the state in Congress for 14 years.

Here’s a look at how the nominees can carry out Kennedy’s plans to “reorganize” the agencies, which have a total budget of $1.7 trillion, employing 80,000 scientists, researchers, doctors and other officials:

The National Institutes of Health, with a budget of 48 billion dollars, supports medical research through grants to scientists across the country and to conduct research itself.

Bhattacharya, a health economist and physician at Stanford University, was one of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 document that asserts that lockdowns cause irreparable harm.

The document — which predated the COVID-19 vaccine — advocated “herd immunity,” the idea that low-risk people should lead normal lives while building up immunity to COVID-19 by infection. Protection should focus on high-risk populations, the document said.

“I think the shutdown was the single biggest public health mistake,” Bhattacharya said in March 2021 during a panel discussion convened by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Barrington’s big announcement was welcomed by some in the first Trump administration, even as it was widely criticized by pathologists. NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins called it dangerous and “normal science.”

His nomination would need to be approved by the Senate.

Kennedy said he would end the NIH’s drug development and infectious disease research and shift its focus to chronic diseases. He also likes to keep NIH funding from researchers with conflicts of interest. In 2017, he said the agency was not doing enough research on the role of vaccines in autism — an idea that has long since been debunked.

The Atlanta-based CDC, with a core budget of $9.2 billion, is charged with protecting Americans from pandemics and other public health threats.

Kennedy has long attacked vaccines and criticized the CDC, repeatedly accusing the agency of corruption. He said on the 2023 podcast that “there is no such thing as a safe and effective vaccine,” and urged people to go against the CDC’s guidelines on when children should be vaccinated. in the last 50 years, and 100 million of them were babies.

Decades ago, Kennedy found common ground with Weldon, who served in the Army and worked as an internal medicine physician before representing a congressional district in Florida from 1995 to 2009.

Beginning in the early 2000s, Weldon played a prominent role in the controversy surrounding the link between the vaccine preservative thimerosal and autism. He was a founding member of the Congressional Autism Caucus and tried to ban thimerosal from all vaccines.

As of 2001, all vaccines designed for the US market and routinely recommended for children 6 years of age or younger do not contain thimerosal or a trace amount, except for the inactivated flu vaccine. Meanwhile, study after study found no evidence that thimerosal caused autism.

Weldon’s congressional record suggests he may go along with Republican efforts to defund the CDC, including eliminating the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which works on topics such as drownings. , drug overdoses and shooting deaths.

Kennedy has been a vocal critic 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 food. many.

Makary, Trump’s pick to run the FDA, is a professor at Johns Hopkins University, a trained surgeon and cancer specialist. He is closely related to Kennedy on several topics.

Makary criticized the overuse of drugs, the use of pesticides in food and the influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies on doctors and government officials.

Kennedy suggested that he would abolish “entire” departments at the FDA and also recently threatened to fire FDA employees for “aggressive pressure” on many unproven products and treatments, including stem cells, milk and green, psychedelics and critical treatments of the COVID era. hydroxychloroquine.

Opinions against Makary during the COVID-19 era included questioning the need for COVID-19 vaccine boosts in young children.

The agency provides health care coverage for more than 160 million people through Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, and sets Medicare payment standards for hospitals, doctors and other providers. With a budget of $ 1.1 trillion and more than 6,000 employees, Oz has a large working center when it is confirmed – and a center that Kennedy did not talk much about.

While Trump tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act during his first term, Kennedy has not had any intention of doing so.

The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled a new plan to force Medicare and Medicaid to cover weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound for more obese Americans. Kennedy opposed the idea, saying that government-sponsored insurance programs should add coverage for healthy meals and gym memberships.

Trump said during his campaign that he would protect Medicare, which provides insurance to older Americans. Oz has advocated for the expansion of Medicare Advantage – a popular independent form of Medicare but also a source of widespread fraud.

Kennedy doesn’t seem 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 is considered a public health risk and what to do about it – suggesting things like warning labels for of products and giving advice. The current surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, declared gun violence a public health crisis in June.

Trump’s pick, Nesheiwat, has been hired as New York City’s chief medical officer with CityMD, a group of urgent care centers. He has also appeared on Fox News and other TV shows, written a book about the “transformative power of prayer” in his medical practice and endorses a brand of vitamins.

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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. AP is solely responsible for all content.