Trump selects Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya to reform health agencies and improve public health
The public-health establishment and left-wing media are rushing to discredit President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to lead health agencies. The New York Times smears them as “outside the medical mainstream.”
Circling the wagons, Dr. Paul Offit, an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration, lamely observes, “What they’re saying when they make these appointments is that we don’t trust the people who are there.”
You bet.
Trump and the public have every reason to distrust the current agency heads, after the repeated blunders, deceptions and coverups during COVID-19. Trump is appointing disruptors with the courage to challenge the status quo.
Like Dr. Marty Makary, nominated to head the Food and Drug Administration.
Makary’s credentials will make it impossible for the Senate to reject him. A Johns Hopkins surgeon and professor of public health, Makary was voted into the prestigious National Academy of Medicine, a Hall of Fame for doctors.
More importantly, if you’re in the hospital, you want Makary on your side.
Two decades ago, he declared war against the epidemic of medical errors killing as many as 100,000 patients a year. Errors like patients being given the wrong dose of a medication, or a surgeon operating on the wrong body part, or a lethal germ invading the patients’ body to cause an infection.
health reporter Lena Sun falsely claims Trump’s team “is largely untested, possesses scant infectious-disease expertise” and would leave the nation in dire straits “when the next pandemic strikes.” Ridiculous.
Truth is, the public-health elite marched in lockstep, muzzling critics even as the mistakes accumulated and a million Americans died of COVID. The US per-capita death rate far exceeded what other developed countries suffered.
To prepare for the next pandemic, the Trump administration must clean house and bring on bold scientists who challenge group-think and demand evidence — unlike the federal officials who recommended masking, lockdowns and distancing during COVID with no evidence.
On Tuesday, Trump named Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — a scientist who demands evidence — to head the National Institutes of Health.
During COVID, Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, urging the country to halt lockdowns of healthy people who could survive the virus, and instead rush resources to the elderly or otherwise medically vulnerable.
For this Bhattacharya was censored, blacklisted, and dismissed as “fringe” by then-NIH Director Francis Collins.
Yes — the same Francis Collins who colluded with Anthony Fauci to hide evidence that NIH grant money ultimately paid the Wuhan Institute of Virology to make viruses more contagious and lethal to humans. Causing 7 million deaths.
Uncowed, Bhattacharya stuck by his evidence and even sued his censors.
Last week, the American Academy of Science and Letters awarded Bhattacharya a medal for his intellectual courage.
But the real winner is America. With scientists like Makary and Bhattacharya in charge, this nation will make evidence-based decisions when the next germ threat strikes.
Betsy McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York.
