Trump’s Public Health Agency Picks, Looking Peaked?

EJ TransitionWatch: Trump’s Public Health Agency Picks, Looking Peaked?

By Joseph A. Davis

Protecting public health is not a job for hacks and quacks. President-elect Donald Trump’s declared picks to lead health agencies have raised concerns sure to come up in Senate confirmation hearings next year.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at right, at an August rally in Arizona for Donald Trump, left at rear. Kennedy is an outspoken vaccine skeptic who has also called to cut fluoride from water supplies and limit infectious disease research. Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

And yes: It’s an environmental story. That’s because there is often no bright line between environmental health and public health. For example, climate change seems to be increasing the incidence of dengue, because of the mosquitoes that carry it.

Journalists covering the environment need to track many federal agencies and need to stay aware of many agencies beyond the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (don’t worry — we will look at what’s coming at the EPA in a future EJ TransitionWatch column).

We now have most of the names Trump has said he wants at major health agencies. Here’s a quick survey.

RFK Jr. at HHS

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s main qualification as nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services may well be that he dropped out of the race as a spoiler to Trump’s candidacy.

He has no experience running a government agency (this one has a $2 trillion budget). And no expertise in health matters. But Trump owes him.

In recent years, Kennedy has been known for his outspoken skepticism about vaccines. Kennedy’s main bugaboo about them — the use of thimerosal as a preservative — has been scientifically discredited. Thimerosal is being discontinued as a precaution anyway.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., vaccines undergo scientific study of their safety and effectiveness before they can be used. Most public health professionals consider them “an achievement of civilization” and a human right. They save millions of lives each year.

 

Kennedy’s agenda for public health

goes well beyond vaccines. …

One former Trump health official

says his plans will ‘cost lives.’

 

Kennedy’s agenda for public health goes well beyond vaccines though. For example, he also wants to eliminate fluoride from drinking water (although HHS has no authority to do this).

And he wants to promote raw milk at a time when bird flu is attacking dairy herds. And restrict chemical food additives. And end infectious disease research at the National Institutes of Health, which is under HHS.

One former Trump health official says Kennedy’s plans will “cost lives.”

 

Bhattacharya at NIH

Speaking of the NIH, Trump’s pick to lead that agency, which oversees and funds much of the nation’s biomedical research, is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya is a physician and professor of medicine and economics at Stanford University, and a “noted critic of COVID-19 lockdown measures.”

The NIH, with a $50 billion budget, consists of some 27 institutes and centers devoted to the study of specific diseases and body systems. Among them is the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, for which at deadline Trump has not yet nominated a pick.

Bhattacharya has been a critic of NIH itself, and has endorsed the pick of Kennedy to head its parent, HHS. Bhattacharya has also found fault with Dr. Anthony Fauci, who headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhattacharya was one of the authors of the “Great Barrington Declaration.” Signed by some public health scientists, it “argued against lockdown measures and in favor of a hands-off approach to the pandemic, relying on letting low-risk people build up herd immunity,” which, according to Politico, then-NIH Director Francis Collins called dangerous.

 

Weldon at CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the main U.S. public health agency, with more than 10,000 employees. As part of HHS, two of the CDC’s main jobs are monitoring disease and preventing and managing outbreaks. It also makes recommendations about who should get vaccines.

Trump’s nominee for the CDC director, Dr. Dave Weldon, was a Florida congressman from 1995 to 2009, then in private practice as a physician. But he has no experience in public health (may require subscription) or in administering an agency. Nor does he have any background in scientific research, one of CDC’s main activities.

In fact, as a congressman, Weldon introduced legislation barring the CDC from studying vaccines. He is a vaccine skeptic. Many anti-abortion activists also welcome him because he had sponsored amendments prohibiting federal “discrimination” against funders who won’t provide abortions.

 

Makary at FDA

Dr. Marty Makary, Trump’s pick to head the Food and Drug Administration, another HHS agency, is currently a surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers, according to his biography.

Makary has criticized the FDA for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially vaccination mandates for children and young adults. But he says he is not anti-vax. He has also criticized the use of pesticides on food.

 

Nesheiwat as surgeon general

The Surgeon General’s Office, yet another HHS agency, makes health recommendations to the public at large and oversees the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a uniformed service of 6,000 public health officers.

Trump has named Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as his surgeon general. While she has little experience in public health (may require subscription), she is board-certified to practice family medicine and is one of five medical directors for a chain of New York urgent care clinics. She is also employed as a commentator for Fox News.

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 9, No. 45. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.