U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s health team is getting into place, as the U.S. Senate confirmed two of his top health officials Tuesday.
The Senate voted 53-47 along party lines to confirm Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University health economist and physician, to lead the National Institutes of Health.
Related: Trump taps controversial GOP aide for chief HHS watchdog
The Senate also confirmed Marty Makary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine, to oversee the Food and Drug Administration. Unlike many of President Donald Trump’s nominees for health positions, a few Democrats chose to support Makary as well. The Senate confirmed him by a 56-44 vote.
Bhattacharya, who rose to prominence for his contrarian views on public health guidance during the coronavirus pandemic, will take charge of an agency that has faced tumult in the early days of the second Trump administration.
Before Bhattacharya was confirmed, the NIH laid off about 1,000 staff, froze grant activities and imposed a policy to cap the amount of research funding universities can receive for overhead costs. The university funding policy has already been challenged in court. The NIH oversees close to $50 billion in annual research spending.
While Bhattacharya said during his confirmation hearing earlier this month that he had no intention of cutting more staff, he may not be the one making the final decision. President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to submit plans for further layoffs this month, before Bhattacharya was confirmed.
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Despite prodding from senators, Bhattacharya gave few clues about his plans to alter how federally funded scientific research is conducted. While he said he believes measles vaccines don’t cause autism, he wouldn’t say whether NIH would fund further studies on the unproven theory.
The Food and Drug Administration has also undergone massive change since Trump took office, which included laying off and then re-hiring employees, canceling a meeting of outside vaccine advisers and ending a shortage of Novo Nordisk A/S’s diabetes and weight-loss medications Ozempic and Wegovy. The agency’s top food regulator quit, and was replaced with a lawyer who had represented food and beverage industry clients.
During Makary’s confirmation hearings earlier this month, senators questioned him about a key public flu vaccine meeting that had been canceled. While Makary wouldn’t commit to rescheduling, he did say he’d have the FDA’s advisory panel on vaccines continue meeting.
In remarks during his Senate hearing, Makary advocated for using “common sense” alongside science. During the pandemic, Makary questioned whether Covid shots were necessary for young people at lower risk of serious infections and demanded more oversight of the vaccines.
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Before the pandemic, much of Makary’s work focused on healthcare costs and price transparency.
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