Top Candidates For FDA, NIH Wait In The Wings As RFK Jr. Steals Spotlight

Bloomberg: Trump's Top Candidate For FDA Seen To Be Marty Makary
Surgeon and author Marty Makary is seen as the leading candidate to run the US Food and Drug Administration under President-elect Donald Trump, people familiar with the matter said. Makary, a pancreatic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine, is a health researcher whose latest book focuses on questioning medical orthodoxy on topics from peanut allergies to antibiotics. (Tozzi, Muller, and Cook, 11/20)

Who might lead the NIH? —

MedPage Today: What To Know About Jay Bhattacharya, Trump's Potential NIH Pick 
Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, of Stanford University in California, has emerged as President-elect Donald Trump's top pick to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), according to reporting from the Washington Post. Amid Trump's stated plans to "restructure federal agencies," Bhattacharya would indeed be an outsider coming in to lead the NIH. And Bhattacharya has previously said he believes top officials there hold too much influence. (Henderson, 11/20)

The Washington Post: Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya Emerges As A Top Candidate To Lead NIH 
The rise of Jay Bhattacharya — from being scorned by the nation’s NIH director to possibly occupying his office four years later — reflects how the backlash to coronavirus policies has helped reshape conservative politics and elevate new voices. (Diamond, 11/16)

Newsweek: RFK Jr.'s Reforms Should Be Embraced By Doctors: Stanford Medical Professor Jay Bhattacharya
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University Medical School, says that American doctors should embrace the reform agenda of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump's controversial pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the next presidential administration. In an article for UnHerd, a nonpartisan website that aims to "test and retest assumptions, without fear or favor," Bhattacharya wrote that critics of Kennedy focus too much on his belief in conspiracy theories. (Whisnant, 11/16)

More on RFK Jr. and the FDA —

Roll Call: FDA’s Nutrition Goals Similar To Kennedy’s, Experts Say 
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to helm the Department of Health and Human Services has said he wants sweeping changes to how the United States approaches health and food, going so far as to suggest that the Food and Drug Administration should eliminate its nutrition operations. But the agency may be more aligned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s goals than he’s made it seem. (DeGroot, 11/20)

The Washington Post: RFK Jr. Wants Fluoride Out Of Water. Oregon Is Way Ahead. 
Oregon, the third-least-fluoridated state, one where the mineral has long been a contentious issue, offers a window into the fluoride fights to come. Just 26 percent of Oregonians using community water systems drink fluoridated water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to 72 percent of Americans overall. Portland is the nation’s largest city without fluoridated water, and voters have repeatedly rejected efforts to add it since 1965, most recently in a bruising 2013 ballot measure vote. In addition to conservative Lebanon, residents of Hillsboro, Oregon, a Democratic-leaning Portland suburb, voted in November against a ballot measure to fluoridate its water supply. The battles in Oregon illustrate how fear of fluoride spans partisan lines, tapping into distrust of authorities and mainstream science. (Nirappil, 11/20)

USA Today: RFK Jr., AIDS Denial, Trans Rights: Why LGBTQ+ People In Uproar
RFK Jr. has become somewhat of a persona non grata for sharing what LGBTQ+ advocates say is harmful misinformation about some of the hot-button topics that impact them the most: HIV, transgender people and their healthcare. In the days since his name was put forward, many have expressed their concern and disappointment both with Kennedy and the direction they fear the Trump administration will take overall. (Oliver, 11/20)

Politico: Bill Nye: RFK Jr. Has ‘Lost His Way’ 
Bill Nye, an engineer best known for his 1990s TV show “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” panned Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s selection as the incoming Trump administration’s top health official. “I think he’s lost his way,” he said on Wednesday while speaking to reporters in the Capitol. Nye, an advocate for the National Ataxia Foundation, said he was in the Capitol “trying to get the FDA just a bit of a nudge” to consider data around a potential treatment for spinocerebellar ataxia, a group of inherited brain disorders that affects physical coordination and loss of fine motor skills. The genetic condition runs in Nye’s family. (Gardner, 11/20)

Also —

Roll Call: CDC Director Looks To Future Of Public Health With Worry
With two months to go before the end of the Biden administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen says she’s worried about the future of the public health agency and the people it serves. House GOP appropriators are pushing a 22 percent cut to the sprawling public health agency. President-elect Donald Trump has nominated a vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. And years after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, skepticism about public health agencies remains despite the agency’s work to restore trust in it and its efforts. (Cohen, 11/20)

Stat: Bluesky Sees Influx Of New Users From 'MedTwitter,' Scientists On X
Ten years ago, science was entering its extremely online era. On Twitter, some academics, traditionally siloed in their niche fields, were growing unprecedented public profiles. Neil Hall, a genome scientist in the United Kingdom, responded by creating what he called the “Kardashian index,” a satirical measure comparing a scientist’s publishing record with their following on Twitter. The K-index — and countless lists of scientists to follow — sparked intense debate over scientists’ role in communicating their work (and more) to the public. (Palmer, 11/21)