President-elect Trump names his picks to head the CDC and FDA

President-elect Donald Trump has announced his picks for key health positions in his new cabinet.

To run the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Trump has turned to David Weldon, M.D., a long-time internist who interrupted his medical career to represent a Florida district for seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before returning to medical practice.

According to The New York Times, some of Weldon’s opinions have been controversial, including endorsing the notion that thimerosal, a preservative used in some vaccines, is a cause of autism in children. That theory has long been discredited by science. In 2007, Weldon also sponsored a failed bill in Congress, which called for vaccine safety research to be conducted by a separate agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Trump has turned to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine pancreatic surgeon Martin Makary, M.D., to run the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. According to The Times, Makary is, on the whole, supportive of childhood vaccines, although he has voiced concern about certain shots, such as the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns and the need for a third COVID-19 booster for healthy children. He has also been a vocal critic of vaccine mandates, claiming instead that doctors underestimate the power of natural immunity in warding off disease.

Trump’s pick to be the new surgeon general is Janette Nesheiwat, M.D. She is medical director of CityMD, a chain of urgent care centers, and a frequent Fox News contributor, according to The Times. She is on record as being generally supportive of COVID-19 vaccines, once telling Fox News that they were a “gift from God.” But she has also voiced opposition to vaccine mandates.

Nesheiwat also sells her own line of vitamins and is the author of a forthcoming book, Beyond the Stethoscope: Miracles in Medicine, which the publisher notes discusses the “transformative power of prayer.” She is also politically well connected: Her sister Julia Nesheiwat was homeland security adviser in the first Trump administration and is the wife of U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz, the Florida Republican who is Trump’s pick for national security adviser.

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