March 26 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate confirmed Marty Makary as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration mostly along party lines on Tuesday night.
Makary was confirmed in a 56-44 vote, with Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire casting “yea” votes alongside their Republican colleagues.
The Johns Hopkins surgeon was nominated for the position by President Donald Trump and will report to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a known anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist.
As commissioner, Makary will lead the agency responsible for ensuring the safety and effectiveness of drugs, vaccines and other biological products, as well as medical devices. The FDA also oversees the safety of food, dietary supplements and other products, such as tobacco and electronic radiation.
He assumes the role amid a time of uncertainty and confusion for his agency, as it — like many others in the federal government — faces workforce and other cuts as the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency seeks to eliminate wasteful spending.
Like other Trump cabinet nominees, Makary was a Fox News contributor. He gained attention during the COVID-19 pandemic for voicing contrary opinions to those coming from the President Joe Biden White House.
Makary supported the controversial notion that natural immunity to COVID-19, meaning developing immunity to the disease by contracting it, was preferable to vaccine-induced immunity, the government’s preferred method to fight the pandemic.
“Public health officials made ignoring natural immunity a political badge,” he said in a May 2023 hearing before the Select Subcommittee on the COVID Pandemic.
“They dismissed it by dangling uncertainty about it, saying we don’t know how long it lasts — as if we knew that vaccinated immunity was certain to be durable. They got it backwards.”
During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Makary vowed to examine childhood illnesses, while raising concerns among medical abortion advocates over the future of access to the abortion pill due to stating he would take “a solid, hard look at the data.”
