One major challenge facing Trump’s chosen health leaders: Keeping politics separate from science
CNN
The announcements came Friday night, one after another, President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for the country’s premier health leadership roles: a New York family physician and Fox News medical contributor for surgeon general; a Florida physician and former congressman to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a surgeon and researcher at Johns Hopkins for the US Food and Drug Administration.
The announcements came Friday night, one after another, President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for the country’s premier health leadership roles: a New York family physician and Fox News medical contributor for surgeon general; a Florida physician and former congressman to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a surgeon and researcher at Johns Hopkins for the US Food and Drug Administration. Public health experts, former government officials and researchers — including 10 who spoke with CNN — began meting out praise, critiques and questions about Trump’s picks: Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for US surgeon general, Dr. David Weldon for CDC director and Dr. Marty Makary for FDA commissioner, each of whom will face a Senate confirmation hearing. Several health experts said Makary and Nesheiwat were reasonable choices who may be tested under a federal health department with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, at the helm of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Several also raised concerns about Weldon, Trump’s pick to lead the CDC, who had previously introduced legislation that would have shifted vaccine safety oversight away from the CDC and has repeatedly raised questions about the safety of vaccines that had already been studied. A key challenge for all of the Trump administration’s new public health leaders, the experts said, will be keeping politics out of science. CNN has reached out to Nesheiwat and Makary for comment and did not receive a response. CNN was not able to reach Weldon. In a response to questions from CNN, Katie Miller, a spokesperson for the Trump transition, said “Mr. Kennedy is the right choice to lead HHS and put Americans back in charge of their healthcare, not corporations.”
