With only weeks until President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated, his nominees for cabinet secretaries and other top posts have been making the rounds meeting with senators who will decide their fate. Confirmation hearings are expected to begin soon. One of the nominees we're most concerned about is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom we editorialized against in November. To reiterate, we believe that RFK Jr. could have a devastating impact on vaccines, HIV/AIDS, and gender-affirming health care for trans youth, resulting in lethal consequences. In recent weeks, Kennedy has been making courtesy calls with senators, and it seems like many are warming to him. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman (D) even popped out of his office to shake RFK Jr.'s hand. This does not bode well.
But there are four others of Trump's nominees to health-related positions that could also be dangerous for the LGBTQ community. All require Senate confirmation.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, a longtime television personality with a history of peddling dubious supplements and other "miracle" cures, was nominated to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This federal agency has a budget of over $1 trillion and influence over drug price negotiations, medication coverage, the Affordable Care Act, and more, as the New York Times reported. The paper noted that Oz has also promoted ineffective COVID treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, which were found not only not to work, but also came with considerable risks.
In fact, Oz, who has long advocated a healthy diet and exercise, seems to go against science in other areas, like promoting untested supplements. On vaccines, he said he got a COVID shot right away, but was then critical of boosters for young people.
The Times noted that during his unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 2022, he said he'd taken on "Big Pharma." "But his own history and financial disclosures from that run show that he has had financial ties to a number of medical companies," the paper reported.
Someone without all of Oz's potential conflicts of interest should be leading Medicare. Millions of people depend on these programs, and the federal government should enter into drug negotiations from a stronger position, not with someone who has financial ties to companies.
Jay Bhattacharya, a physician-scientist at Stanford University, has been nominated by Trump to head the National Institutes of Health. This is the nation's medical research agency and, unfortunately, Bhattacharya is not the person who should be leading it. Like RFK Jr., Bhattacharya is a critic of the agency he would run. As Politico reported, he was an author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated against lockdown measures during COVID, relying on letting low-risk people build up herd immunity. As we now know, the U.S. never really achieved herd immunity — when so many people are immune a virus can't easily spread — and, in fact, there are still plenty of COVID cases today. Thanks to vaccines, however, the death rate is much lower than it was almost five years ago.
The country needs an NIH leader who will base decisions on science, not a contrarian who could cripple the agency.
Meanwhile, Trump nominated another doctor, Martin Makary, to head the Food and Drug Administration. "The British American physician, who attracted attention during the COVID-19 pandemic for his opposition to vaccine mandates and other public health measures, has long been an outspoken critic of the agency he is now expected to lead," reported Science. This pick is especially worrisome, as the FDA approves drugs, including those used to fight HIV/AIDS. As we recently reported online, Gilead Sciences is hoping for FDA approval in 2025 for its twice-yearly lenacapavir PrEP, which is not yet allowed for HIV prevention. It is currently only approved as part of a combination treatment regimen for people with multidrug-resistant virus.
Makary was a frequent guest on Fox News, which tells you all you need to know. Like Bhattacharya, he, too, was a proponent of herd immunity during COVID. If Makary is confirmed, RFK Jr. could put pressure on him not to approve certain drugs, which could result in unnecessary deaths. (We wrote previously about RFK Jr.'s dabbling in AIDS denialism, which could adversely affect approval of PrEP drugs and other treatments.)
Finally, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, another former frequent Fox News guest, was nominated by Trump to be surgeon general, one of the leading voices on public health matters. Nesheiwat also sells her own brand of supplements, so there's a potential conflict of interest right there. A medical director of a New York-area urgent care clinic network, Nesheiwat prescribed hydroxychloroquine to patients during the early days of COVID after Trump began taking it, HuffPost reported. At the time, there hadn't been any testing on whether the drug was effective against COVID. After six trials were done, the World Health Organization later said it was not effective to prevent or treat COVID, the outlet reported.
She's also spoken out against treatments for transgender youth, HuffPost reported, which is out of step with major medical organizations.
We see a pattern here of Trump intentionally selecting people to run agencies with which they disagree. While there certainly is a place for criticism, and valid medical research may end up coming to different conclusions on issues, we don't believe the country should have these health officials in charge of Medicare, research, and serving as the public face of health policy. There are just too many warning signs that they will instead seek to decimate these federal agencies, which is just what Trump wants. That could lead to resurgences in diseases like polio, COVID, and other illnesses. But it's the harm to those living with HIV/AIDS that could be most deadly. There isn't a vaccine for HIV, and getting people who test positive on treatment as soon as possible has already been shown to greatly reduce transmission of the virus.
The Senate should reject all of these nominees, but we're realistic enough to know that that's unlikely to happen. We hope that in the case of the FDA, at least, more medically knowledgeable minds will prevail when it comes to the commission approving lifesaving drugs.
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