ARTICLE SUMMARY:
A thumbnail sketch of Donald Trump's nominee for FDA commissioner: John's Hopkins University surgeon Marty Makary, MD.
President-elect Trump’s FDA commissioner nominee Marty Makary, MD, would bring clinical bona fides to the post as a surgeon but also potential controversy as one who has bucked the medical establishment, and in some cases medical consensus, in recent years.
Makary is a professor and chief of islet transplant surgery at Johns Hopkins University. He’s published four books, including, most recently, “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health,” which addresses how misapplied medical care contributed to the opioid crisis, obesity, and antibiotic resistance, among other public health problems. “Could it be that many modern-day health crises have been caused by the hubris of the medical establishment?” the book jack poses. Makary has also written about price gouging and the challenges of transparency in healthcare, and he helped develop a widely adapted operating room checklist approach to improve surgical safety.
The surgeon gain attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, touting the protection received from natural immunity and opposing COVID vaccine mandates for the general public, though not opposing vaccines generally. He has increasingly aligned himself with Trump’s HHS secretary nominee RFK Jr. and his “Make American Healthy Again” agenda. Makary would report directly to Kennedy in the administration if both are confirmed by the Senate.
He is not widely associated with specific medtech policy issues. However, he was quoted multiple times on camera in “The Bleeding Edge,” a 2018 Netflix documentary critical of the medical device industry and FDA oversight. In one segment of the film, Makary criticized the rise of Intuitive Surgical’s Da Vinci robot. “The story of how the robot came into healthcare is the story of what’s wrong with medicine in America today—massive adoption of a new technology with little evaluation of the outcomes,” Makary said.
“We congratulate Dr. Makary on his nomination and look forward to his leadership at FDA,” AdvaMed CEO Scott Whitaker said following Trump’s November 22 announcement of the nomination. “I know that Dr. Makary, as a renowned surgeon and professor at one of the world’s top universities, understands the value of medical technologies in every healthcare setting ... It is critical that FDA maintain the highest standards for safety and efficacy while ensuring the review process is efficient, transparent, and predictable to ensure every patient has access to the best medical technologies.”
