WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has assembled a team of medical opponents and health critics to implement an agenda aimed at reshaping the way the federal government oversees drugs, health programs and nutrition.
On Tuesday evening, Trump appointed Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health, naming an opponent of pandemic lockdowns and vaccination mandates to head the country’s top medical research agency. He is the latest in a series of Trump nominees to voice criticism of COVID-19 health measures.
Bhattacharya and the other nominees are expected to play a critical role in implementing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sprawling “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, which includes removing thousands of additives from U.S. foods and eliminating conflicts of interest Authorities and the creation of incentives for healthier foods calls for school lunches and other nutrition programs. Trump named Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH and other federal health agencies.
The novel health priorities bear little resemblance to those of Trump’s first term, which included cutting regulations on food, drug and agricultural companies.
“Heading into the new Trump administration, you’re hearing a very different tune,” said Gabby Headrick, a nutrition researcher at the George Washington University School of Public Health. “It is important that we all proceed with caution and remember some of the health declines we saw the first time around.”
Trump’s electors have no experience running gigantic bureaucratic agencies, but they know how to talk about health on television.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid select Dr. Mehmet Oz, who hosted a talk show for 13 years and is a well-known wellness and lifestyle influencer. The Food and Drug Administration’s favorite, Dr. Marty Makary, and Surgeon General Dr. Janette Nesheiwat is a recurrent contributor to Fox News.
Some of them, like many of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, have ties to Florida: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention favorite Dave Weldon represented the state in Congress for 14 years.
Here’s a look at how Kennedy’s nominees might implement plans to “reorganize” agencies that have a total budget of $1.7 trillion and employ 80,000 scientists, researchers, doctors and other officials:
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health has a budget of $48 billion and funds medical research through grants to scientists across the country and conducting 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 claimed lockdowns were causing irreparable harm.
The document — which came before COVID-19 vaccines were available — 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 says.
“I think the lockdowns were the biggest public health mistake,” Bhattacharya said in March 2021 during a panel discussion convened by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Great Barrington Declaration was welcomed by some in the first Trump administration, even as it was widely condemned by disease experts. The then NIH director Dr. Francis Collins called it threatening and “not mainstream science.”
His nomination would have to be approved by the Senate.
Kennedy has announced that he will pause the NIH’s drug development and infectious disease research and shift the focus to chronic diseases. He also wants to withhold NIH funding 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 tasked with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats.
Kennedy has long attacked vaccines and criticized the CDC, repeatedly accusing the agency of corruption. In a 2023 podcast, he said that “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective” and urged people to defy CDC guidelines on whether and when children should be vaccinated. The World Health Organization estimates that vaccines have saved more than 150 million lives over the past 50 years, and that 100 million of those were infants.
Decades ago, Kennedy found common ground with Weldon, who served in the Army and worked as an internal medicine doctor before representing a congressional district in central Florida from 1995 to 2009.
Beginning in the early 2000s, Weldon played a prominent role in the 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 tried to ban thimerosal from all vaccines.
Since 2001, all vaccines manufactured for the US market and routinely recommended for children under 6 years of age contain no or only trace amounts of thimerosal, with the exception of the inactivated influenza vaccine. Meanwhile, study after study found no evidence that thimerosal causes autism.
Weldon’s voting record in Congress suggests he may agree with Republican efforts to downsize the CDC, including dismantling the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which deals with issues such as drownings, drug overdoses and gunshot deaths.
Food and Drug Administration
Kennedy was highly critical of the FDA, which employs 18,000 people and is responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs, vaccines and other medical products, as well as oversight of cosmetics, electronic cigarettes and most foods.
Makary, Trump’s nominee to lead the FDA, is a professor at Johns Hopkins University, a trained surgeon and a cancer specialist. He is closely aligned with Kennedy on several issues.
Makary has denounced the overprescription of medications, the apply of pesticides on food and the influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies on doctors and government regulators.
Kennedy has indicated that he would purge “entire” FDA departments and also recently threatened to fire FDA employees for “aggressive suppression” of a variety of unfounded products and therapies, including stem cells, raw milk, psychedelics and discredited treatments COVID-era hydroxychloroquine.
Makary’s contrarian views during the COVID-19 crisis included the question of the need for a booster vaccination against COVID-19 in teenage children.
Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services
The agency provides health insurance coverage to more than 160 million people through Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act and also sets Medicare payment rates for hospitals, physicians and other providers. With a budget of $1.1 trillion and more than 6,000 employees, Oz will have to lead a massive agency if confirmed — and an agency that Kennedy hasn’t spoken much about.
While Trump tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act in his first term, Kennedy has not yet targeted it.
The Biden administration announced a novel plan Tuesday to force Medicare and Medicaid to cover weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound for many obese Americans. Kennedy rejected the idea, saying government-sponsored insurance programs should instead expand coverage for healthier foods and gym memberships.
Trump said during his campaign that he would protect Medicare, which insures older Americans. Oz has advocated for expanding Medicare Advantage — a privately run version of Medicare that is popular but also a source of widespread fraud.
Surgeon General
Kennedy does not 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 is considered a public health threat and what should be done about it – by suggesting things like warnings for products and issuing advice. Current Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared gun violence a public health crisis in June.
Trump’s nominee Nesheiwat is employed as medical director in New York City by CityMD, a group of emergency facilities. She has also appeared on Fox News and other television 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 Science and Educational Media Group of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
