Donald Trump reveals names of future health advisors

President-elect Donald Trump has announced his picks for the remaining critical public health roles in his new administration.

Trump nominated Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as U.S. surgeon general; Dr. Marty Makary as commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; Dr. Dave Weldon, former Florida congressman, as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health.

The announced selections come as some in the public health world have already expressed concern about the president-elect’s intention to elevate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, to the nation’s top health care post as secretary of the Department of Health and US Human Services. Trump’s picks paint a fuller picture of what the health agency would look like under Kennedy, if the nomination is confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

A person familiar with the search told Kaitlan Collins from CNN that Kennedy played a key role in selecting names to fill the department, including the FDA commissioner and the CDC director.

The nominees, if also confirmed, will fall under the purview of Kennedy, who has emphasized the importance of ridding the department and its agencies of corruption. Trump, in turn, said on the campaign trail that he would let Kennedy “go crazy with his health.”

US Surgeon General

Also known as “the nation’s doctor,” the surgeon general is a doctor who focuses on educating and advising Americans on how to improve their health. He or she issues warnings, reports, and calls to action to provide the best scientific information available on crucial issues. He or she also serves as vice admiral of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, overseeing this group of uniformed officers who seek to promote the health of the US.

Nominees for surgeon general must be confirmed by the Senate to serve.

Nesheiwat is a general practitioner and Fox News medical contributor certified by the American Board of Family Medicine. She attended medical school at the American University of the Caribbean in St. Maarten, according to her New York State doctor profile, and did graduate work at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

“We’re approaching the five-year anniversary of Covid,” Nesheiwat said Sunday in a Fox News segment about mpox. “And if you remember, under the leadership of President Trump’s administration, you’ll remember we had incredible public health policies, President Trump’s unparalleled creation of Operation Warp Speed ​​was one like we’ve never seen before. And this is a vaccine that saved thousands of lives, and we still saw lives saved even after President Trump left office,” he said.

FDA Commissioner

The Food and Drug Commissioner oversees the FDA, which is responsible for the safety, effectiveness, and security of drugs, biologics, medical devices, foods, and cosmetics. The authorization or approval of vaccines falls under the purview of the FDA. It also regulates the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of tobacco products.

The commissioner is traditionally a doctor, and nominees are subject to Senate confirmation.

Makary is a surgeon and researcher at Johns Hopkins University. He received his medical degree from Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and attended graduate school at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, Johns Hopkins says, and helped lead the World Health Organization’s patient safety program.

Makary, like Nesheiwat, has ties to Fox News. In an op-ed published on Fox News at the height of the pandemic in 2021, Makary argued that Covid-19 had revealed the FDA to be a “broken” administration “mired in politics and bureaucracy.”

The agency moved too slowly in its authorization of the antiviral pill molnupiravir, he said, and stubbornly clung to its recommendations on Covid vaccine spacing. “It’s time for our old-school medical leaders to step back into advisory roles and let new scientists, those who are not afraid to speak out, take the lead,” he wrote.

He became a paid contributor to the network when the pandemic eased in March 2024 and remained in the role until mid-2024, according to a Fox News spokesperson. He appeared on Fox News Sunday earlier this week to endorse Kennedy for HHS secretary.

During the pandemic, Makary has been an advocate for the importance of natural immunity derived from Covid-19 infection.

In February 2021, he predicted in the Wall Street Journal that this natural immunity would help the nation achieve herd immunity to the coronavirus within two months. Later that year, he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that workers who had natural immunity and who were fired for not being fully vaccinated should be reinstated. “The superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear.”

CDC Director

The CDC director leads the nation’s top public health agency, which deals with disease prevention and control and environmental health. Among its most important functions is making final recommendations on vaccines and immunization schedules. He or she also serves as administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which responds to large-scale hazardous exposures such as chemical spills.

Previously appointed by the president, the CDC director position will be subject to Senate confirmation starting in January.

Weldon earned his medical degree from SUNY-Buffalo on an Army scholarship and did postgraduate training in internal medicine at Letterman Army Medical Center. He served six years on active duty and eight years in the Army Reserve, according to a biography on his U.S. Senate campaign website. He is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine.

“As a physician, Dr. Weldon was involved in many health policy issues, including efforts to ban human cloning and the safety of vaccines,” the campaign website notes. “He helped lead the effort to remove toxic mercury-containing preservatives from childhood vaccines.”

In 2007, then-Representative Weldon introduced the Vaccine Safety and Public Confidence Assurance Act, which aimed to create a “Vaccine Safety Assessment Agency” within HHS. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is responsible for promoting high immunization rates and vaccine safety, duties perceived by some as a conflict of interest,” the legislation noted.

In 2005, during the legal battle over Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who was left in a persistent vegetative state after cardiac arrest, Weldon introduced the Incapacitated Persons Legal Protection Act to allow a federal court to review the issue.

Director of the NIH

The director of the NIH sets the agency’s policy and manages the programs and activities of the research center’s 27 institutes and centers, which include the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, the National Library of Medicine, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Nominees for director of the research center are subject to Senate confirmation.

Bhattacharya received his medical degree from the Stanford University School of Medicine and a doctorate from the university’s Department of Economics.

He has emerged as a critic of strict lockdown policies during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, he co-authored the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which called for a focus on protecting the elderly and most vulnerable while ending lockdown measures such as school closures, saying they caused disproportionate harm to health and safety. well-being of the general population. This stance was at odds with views held by public health officials — with then-NIH director Dr. Francis Collins calling the writers of the open letter “fringe epidemiologists” — and Bhattacharya later said he was the target of censure for federal government authorities.

In 2022, Bhattacharya and Makary, Trump’s pick to lead the FDA, were among a group of eight scientists and researchers who created “a blueprint containing key public health questions for a COVID-19 commission” on the nation’s response. to the pandemic. The Norfolk Group document questioned topics such as “failures to protect high-risk older Americans,” “collateral damage from lockdown,” “misleading risk communication,” and “minimizing immunity acquired through infection.”

This content was originally published in Donald Trump reveals names of future health advisors on the CNN Brasil website.

Source: CNN Brasil