AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President-elect Donald Trump caused a stir when he named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services, mostly because of Kennedy's controversial views on vaccines. Now Trump has announced who he wants for three other top health spots, leading crucial agencies that Republicans have targeted for reform. NPR health correspondent Pien Huang is here to discuss the picks. Good morning, Pien.
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Good morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So these positions would answer to Kennedy, but they're pretty significant on their own, right?
HUANG: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these are the nominees to lead the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and also to serve as surgeon general. So, as you mentioned, all three are under the umbrella of Health and Human Services, and all three of these picks are actually trained physicians, but they've all taken pretty different paths to get to the top of Trump's list.
RASCOE: OK, so let's dive in. The FDA - who might be put in charge there?
HUANG: OK. So the FDA regulates food safety, drug approvals responsible for a lot of things, including vaccines. Trump's pick for FDA Commissioner is Dr. Marty Makary. He's a surgeon, public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, also a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and Ayesha, those are some pretty solid scientific credentials.
He's published books criticizing the high cost of healthcare, medical errors, lack of transparency in medicine, and he's talked about some of those as a medical contributor on Fox News. Recently, just in September, he joined Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a round table in Congress on health and nutrition, where he criticized how food in the U.S. is grown and processed.
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MARTIN MAKARY: We have poisoned our food supply, engineered highly addictive chemicals that we put into our food. We spray it with pesticides that kill pests. What do you think they do to our gut lining in our microbiome?
HUANG: In his nomination, Trump said that Makary would also help cut red tape at the agency.
RASCOE: All right. That's the FDA. So who does Trump want for the CDC?
HUANG: OK. CDC protects public health, and for that, Trump has chosen Dr. Dave Weldon. He's also a doctor, internal medicine physician, and he's also served in the army and in Congress. Now, this is not a name that people in Public Health had really expected, but in his nomination, Trump said he had worked previously with CDC, pushing through a ban on patenting human embryos. He did that as a congressman.
Weldon is a Republican who represented part of Central Florida from 1995 to 2009. And another thing that he did as congressman was spearhead the passage of the so-called Weldon Amendment. It says that states or health agencies could lose federal funds if they discriminate against workers or groups that don't want to provide abortions.
RASCOE: OK. So lastly, we have Trump's pick for the next surgeon general, what's commonly called the nation's doctor. Who's that?
HUANG: OK. So Trump has picked Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, family medicine and emergency medicine physician around New York City, sells her own line of supplements. She's also a medical contributor to Fox News, and in January, she urged parents to vaccinate their kids, reminding them that measles is dangerous.
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JANETTE NESHEIWAT: Serious complications could include blindness or inflammation in your brain or pneumonia, so that's why it is so important. Talk to your doctor to make sure you're getting your child your routine vaccinations, especially measles, mumps and rubella.
HUANG: So that firm advocacy for childhood vaccination might put her at odds with Kennedy, her possible future boss, who has questioned the safety of childhood vaccinations.
RASCOE: OK. And all of them would need Senate confirmation. That's NPR's Pien Huang. Pien, thank you.
HUANG: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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