Marty Makary is Trump's pick to lead FDA. He gained prominence by bashing the medical establishment: 10 points

Donald Trump nominated Dr Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration, a man who shot to fame by skewering the medical establishment in books and papers and bashing the federal response to COVID-19 on TV. Makary, a Johns Hopkins University professor, declared the US health system to be "broken" and in need of a shakeup, according to CBS News. He’ll appear Thursday before a Senate panel considering his nomination.

ALSO READ: Trump under fire for 'dancing on table' at golf retreat as wildfires rip through South Carolina. Watch video

Here are key points about Dr Marty Makary, another controversial Trump pick:

-Makary has criticized in books and articles the overprescribing of drugs, the use of pesticides on foods and the undue influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies over doctors and government regulators.


-A Johns Hopkins University surgeon and researcher, Makary has called the US food supply "poison", adding the federal government is the “greatest perpetrator of misinformation” about COVID-19.

-He even suggested that pesticides, fluoride and overuse of antibiotics may be to blame for rising rates of infertility, attention deficit disorder and other health conditions.

ALSO READ: Trump's big warning: 'All federal funding will stop for any school, college that allows...'

-Makary’s views align with those of the man who would be his boss: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary who built a following by sowing doubts about vaccines, ultraprocessed foods and fluoride. Notably, Makary has never embraced Kennedy’s discredited idea that vaccines might cause autism.

-Makary reached a new audience on TV as a critic of COVID-19 measures. Trained as a pancreatic surgeon, Makary’s initial work focused on uncontroversial topics like hospital costs and surgical checklists, as reported by The Associated Press.

-In 2016, he made headlines with a paper stating that medical errors were “the third leading cause of death in the U.S.” That conclusion was quickly disputed by other experts, who said the paper’s death estimate was ten times higher than more rigorous reviews.

-During the COVID-19 pandemic, Makary reached a much broader audience as a regular on Fox News, where he opposed vaccine mandates and called the FDA “broken” and “mired in politics and red tape.”

ALSO READ: Gene Hackman's neighbours drop bombshell confession, reveal eccentric details days after actor's death

-Like others in Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement, Makary says many of the chronic health problems afflicting Americans may be related to food additives, pesticides and other chemicals. “How about research on the pesticides that have hormone effects in children that may explain the declining fertility and lowering age of puberty?” Makary asked, in a September podcast with Dr. Drew Pinsky.

-“The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government,” Makary told House lawmakers during a 2023 roundtable hosted by Republicans. A 2022 paper coauthored by Makary concluded that requiring booster shots in young people would cause more injury than benefit. None of the authors specialized in studying infectious diseases or vaccine reactions.

-In a February 2021 Wall Street Journal piece, he wrote that "COVID will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life." That summer the delta variant of the virus ripped through the U.S., followed by omicron in the winter, leading to hundreds of thousands of additional deaths.

(With AP inputs)