Harvard Chan alum Marty Makary chosen to lead FDA
Martin “Marty” Makary, MPH ’98, will be nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
If confirmed by the Senate, Makary would lead the agency responsible for regulating the nation’s food supply, vaccines, medicines and medical devices, cosmetics, tobacco, and biologics.
Makary is a physician who specializes in surgical oncology and currently serves as chief of islet transplant surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He’s also a member of the National Academy of Medicine; a former leader of the World Health Organization Patient Safety Program; a medical and health policy researcher who has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles; and an author who has written three New York Times best-selling books on health care.
A vocal commentator on U.S. health policy, Makary has published opinion articles in outlets such as the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and regularly appears on Fox News. He has advocated for policies and practices that lower health costs and reduce unnecessary procedures and medical errors. He also provided commentary on the public health response to COVID-19 that sparked controversy; Makary initially supported lockdowns and universal masking, then later in the pandemic opposed broad vaccine mandates and argued that the U.S. would reach herd immunity by April 2021.
In October 2021, Makary wrote directly about the agency he may lead in a Fox News opinion piece: “COVID has given us a clear-eyed look at a broken Food and Drug Administration that’s mired in politics and red tape. Americans can now see why medical advances often move at turtle speed. We need fresh leadership at the FDA to change the culture at the agency and promote scientific advancement, not hinder it.”
“I am confident that Dr. Makary, having dedicated his career to high-quality, lower-cost care, will restore the FDA to the gold standard of scientific research and cut the bureaucratic red tape at the agency to make sure Americans get the medical cures and treatments they deserve,” Trump said in a statement on his social media site, Truth Social.
Makary recently spoke out about improving Americans’ health through focusing on chronic disease prevention, rather than just treatment. “We have the most over-medicated, sickest population in the world and no one is talking about root causes,” he said during a Senate roundtable in September. “Maybe we need to talk about school lunch programs, rather than putting every kid on obesity drugs. Maybe we need to talk about treating diabetes with cooking classes, not just throwing insulin at everybody. Maybe we need to talk about environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo to treat it.”
Read the Johns Hopkins University press release: Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary picked to lead Food and Drug Administration
Read an NBC article: Trump picks Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, for FDA chief
Read an NPR article: What to know about Trump’s picks for CDC, FDA and surgeon general
