On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed Dr. Martin A. McCurry as Food and Drug Administration commissioner and Dr. Jay Batacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health, and installed two medical critics in an influential post during the Trump administration to cut spending at health agencies.
A 56-44 vote voter, confirmed that Dr. McCurry led an agency with a wide range of regulatory authorities for drugs and vaccine-containing products to center the discussion on the safety of abortion drugs and widespread inoculation.
Confirmation of Dr. Bhattacharya – 53-47, by partisan vote, he places him on the head of the world's best medical research institutions.
Dr. McCurry, a pancreatic cancer surgeon and health policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, attracted attention from the Trump team as a personality and commentator for Covid's Fox News, who falsely predicted that the country was “raceing towards very low levels of infections” in 2021.
At a confirmation hearing this month, Dr. McCurry showed that he shares Republican concerns about expanding access to abortion drugs.
He also expressed support for the vaccine, despite the FDA suggesting that the agency should review the role of vaccine experts seeking advice.
Lawmakers warn that the Trump administration's staff cuts and job freezes could undermine the FDA's efforts to ensure food supply is safe.
With a $48 billion budget and funding medical research on diseases such as cancer and diabetes, the NIH has blocked key parts of the grants and completely eliminated some grants, brought about by layoffs and moves from the Trump administration.
Dr. Bhatacharya, a medical economist and professor of medicine at Stanford University, largely avoided questions about these decisions at a confirmation hearing in early March.
He entered the public spotlight in 2020. He was among the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an anti-lockdown paper.
He also advocates reforms to scientific funding practices. This applied a greater scrutiny of findings not supported by subsequent research, directing money towards the most extensive and innovative research rather than progressive research.
Asked by lawmakers this month about vaccine safety, Dr. Bhattacharya said not only supports the administration of children against diseases like measles, but scientists should do more research into autism and vaccines.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., faced criticism of reluctantly recommending vaccinations in the midst of a fatal measles outbreak in West Texas, oversees both the FDA and the NIH
