Marty Makary Seen as Leading Candidate for Trump FDA Pick
(Bloomberg) -- 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.
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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.
The decision isn’t final and Trump could select another candidate, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Makary didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“President-elect Trump is making decisions on who will serve in his second administration,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition team. “Those decisions will continue to be announced by him when they are made.”
The head of the FDA has oversight of the nation’s drug approval process, along with regulation of medical devices, food, and cosmetics.
Makary has a long career as a health researcher, writing on hospital safety and quality and health-care prices. In recent public appearances he’s drawn attention to rising rates of chronic disease and the role of ultraprocessed foods and environmental exposures, issues that have been been high on the agenda for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Makary recently appeared on Fox News praising Kennedy, who has a history of promoting debunked theories that vaccines cause autism, and Makary urged the audience to disregard Kennedy’s earlier comments.
“He’s saying very clearly he’s not anti-vax, he’s not going to remove or take away anyone’s vaccines,” he said on the show.
Makary criticized the FDA’s approval of Covid-19 vaccine boosters following the pandemic. In a 2023 Wall Street Journal op-ed he wrote that vaccines shouldn’t be universally recommended for younger, lower-risk patients without more data from human trials.
“Undermining the normal scientific and regulatory process erodes public trust,” he wrote.
If he gets the FDA role, Makary “could make the agency more suspicious of, rather than collaborative with, drugmakers,” analysts from RBC Capital Markets led by Brian Abrahams wrote in a Nov. 20 note.
Trump appointments including Kennedy and Mehmet Oz, who was tapped to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, raise uncertainty for investors, Jefferies analysts wrote in a Nov. 19 note.
Makary’s views on the drug industry and overhauling the FDA seem to align with Kennedy’s, but “we do not see fundamental impacts” to the agency’s position on most biotech innovation, they wrote.
Mizuho’s Jared Holz wrote that Makary, if nominated, may be viewed positively by Wall Street. “His stances on modern medicine including but not limited to new therapies and Covid-19 vaccine adoption look to be very pragmatic,” Holz wrote in a note published Nov. 20.
--With assistance from Stephanie Lai, Riley Griffin and Tonya Garcia.
(Updates with analyst comments in last four paragraphs)
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