The Senate confirmed two of President Donald Trump’s health nominees Tuesday evening, largely along party lines, in a win for the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement.
Senators voted 53-47 to confirm Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Senate approved Marty Makary’s nomination to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during a vote of 56 to 44. Democratic New Hampshire Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen and Democratic Senate Whip Dick Durbin joined with Senate Republicans to confirm Makary.
Bhattacharya and Makary will oversee departments under Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They said they are committed to working with him to implement ‘Make America Healthy Again’ policy priorities.
Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, stressed five priorities during his confirmation hearing: Focusing on chronic disease; tackling the reproducibility crisis in science; establishing a culture of free speech and diversity of viewpoints; recommitting to innovative breakthroughs over incremental progress by powerful incumbent scientists; and introducing regulation of risky research that poses the risk of a pandemic.
“I love the NIH, but post-pandemic, American biomedical sciences are at a crossroads,” Bhattacharya said during his confirmation hearing on March 5. “A November 2024 Pew study reported that only 26% of the American public had ‘a great deal of confidence’ in scientists to act in the public’s best interest; 23% have not too much or no confidence at all.”
“The NIH can and must solve the current crisis of scientific data reliability, and under my leadership, if confirmed, it will do so,” Bhattacharya added.
Bhattacharya cleared the Senate HELP Committee during a vote of 12 to 11, along party lines, on March 13.
“The NIH needs a leader that will restore Americans’ trust in public health institutions and find unbiased solutions to Americans’ most challenging health problems,” Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, said in a statement. “Dr. Bhattacharya is ready to take on this responsibility and implement President Trump’s vision to Make America Healthy Again.”
Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued for protecting vulnerable populations rather than implementing mass lockdowns to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NIH continues to fund more than a billion dollars in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, despite the president’s executive order requiring the federal government to terminate DEI activities, the DCNF first reported.
Makary, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor and a pancreatic surgeon, criticized the FDA’s leadership under President Joe Biden in an op-ed from 2021, arguing for “fresh leadership at the FDA to change the culture at the agency and promote scientific advancement, not hinder it.”
Makary cleared the Senate HELP Committee during a vote of 14 to 9 on March 13.
“We now have a generational opportunity in American health care,” Makary said during his confirmation hearing on March 6. “President Trump and [Health and Human Services] Secretary Kennedy’s focus on healthy foods has galvanized a grassroots movement in America. Childhood obesity is not a willpower problem, and the rise of early-onset Alzheimer’s is not genetic — we should be and we will be assessing the foods impacting our health.”
Makary testified during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing in March 2023 where he said it was a “no brainer” that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Former Planned Parenthood president Leana Wen praised Bhattacharya and Makary in an op-ed for the Washington Post on March 11, telling Senate Democrats not to “reflexively oppose” the two health nominees.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/CSPAN)
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