Table of Contents
President Donald Trump nominated Dr. Marty Makary to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal agency tasked with ensuring the safety and efficacy of drugs, medical devices, food, and cosmetics.
Makary, a surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University, will appear before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Thursday, March 6 for his nomination hearing. If confirmed by the Senate, he would run one of the country’s leading health agencies, overseeing the regulation of products ranging from vaccines to abortion medications.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Here’s what to know about Makary.
He works at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Makary serves as the chief of islet transplant surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Much of his research has focused on the underlying causes of disease and the cost of health care. He’s also a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
He has made controversial statements about COVID-19 vaccine mandates
Makary initially expressed support for lockdown restrictions and masking early on in the COVID-19 pandemic. But later, he made regular appearances on Fox News, where he opposed COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, says that we shouldn’t have had to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine, but it made sense to do so during a global pandemic.
“In a better world, a world in which we do not live, anybody who looked at the data for those vaccines would have gotten the vaccine,” Offit says.
“Hospitals were being overrun. We had nurses wearing bandanas for masks. We had nurses wearing garbage bags for gowns,” he continues. “You shouldn’t have had to have mandated vaccines, but it just seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do at the time to try and increase vaccine rates.”
Some estimates suggest that, in the first five months of vaccine availability, COVID-19 vaccines saved nearly 140,000 lives in the U.S.
While Makary has not publicly aligned himself with the anti-COVID-19- vaccine views that his would-be boss, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has shared, he accused public-health officials in former President Joe Biden’s Administration of “instituting a vaccine mandate that ignored natural immunity.” In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal published in Feb. 2021, Makary argued that the U.S. was moving toward herd immunity, predicting that “COVID will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life.” Months after the piece was published, COVID-19 cases surged as the Delta variant spread across the country. Soon after, in the winter, the Omicron variant tore through the nation, leading to another spike in cases. Thousands of people died during the surges.
If confirmed to lead the FDA, Makary would oversee the regulation of the country’s vaccine supply. At the end of February, members of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee learned that a meeting on March 13 to decide on the influenza strains that would be included in the next flu shot was canceled. The meeting has been held every year since the late 1960s. Offit says he hopes that Makary, at Thursday’s nomination hearing, will say he values external, expert advisors, like those on the vaccine advisory committee.
He suggested the country’s food supply could be to blame for chronic health problems
Makary shares many of the same views on food that Kennedy and his “Make America Healthy Again” movement do. He has suggested that chronic illnesses and diseases may be tied to food additives and other chemicals that Americans are being exposed to. He has labeled the country’s food supply “poisoned.” The Associated Press spoke to nutrition experts, who criticized Makary for his remarks, arguing that it’s overly simplistic to blame ultraprocessed foods for chronic diseases in the U.S.
He has been accused of spreading misleading information on abortion
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Makary appeared on Fox News, where he claimed that fetuses between 15 and 20 weeks of gestation “will actually resist the instruments of abortion.” Reproductive rights advocates slammed Makary’s comments, accusing him of spreading disinformation.
Read More: The Powers Trump’s Nominees Will Have Over Abortion
If confirmed as the commissioner of the FDA, Makary would have significant influence over the abortion medication mifepristone, which the FDA approved to be used for abortions more than 20 years ago. The Biden Administration made efforts to increase access to the medication, but reproductive rights advocates are concerned that Makary, if confirmed, could roll back those efforts and restrict access to the drug.
He’s been a vocal critic of federal health agencies
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Makary called the FDA “broken,” accusing it of being “mired in politics and red tape.” He claimed that the agency needed “fresh leadership” that would “promote scientific advancement, not hinder it.”
He has also accused the nation’s leading health agencies of not paying enough attention to chronic diseases, claiming without evidence that “the greatest perpetrator of misinformation has been the United States government with the food pyramid.”
