The Senate Tuesday confirmed Dr. Marty Makary to run the Food and Drug Administration and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health.
Both were confirmed largely along party lines. Makary was confirmed as FDA commissioner by a vote of 56-44, while Bhattacharya was confirmed as NIH director by a margin of 53-47.
Three Democrats joined all Republicans in confirming Makary: Sens. Dick Durbin, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen. However, no Democrats voted in favor of Bhattacharya.
Both agencies are part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which like much of the federal government, has seen mass layoffs as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to implement budget cuts using the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk.
Last week, officials with several HHS agencies told CBS News they were bracing for further layoffs, including at the FDA and NIH.
One person told CBS News up to 3,800 NIH employees could be let go.
Makary, a Johns Hopkins University surgeon and researcher, gained prominence on Fox News and other conservative outlets for his contrarian views during the COVID-19 pandemic. He questioned the need for masking and, though he was not opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine, Makary had concerns about vaccinations in young children.
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Trained as a surgeon and cancer specialist, Makary was part of a vocal group of physicians calling for greater emphasis on herd immunity to stop the virus, or the idea that mass infections would quickly lead to population-level protection.
Makary has criticized in books and articles the overprescribing of drugs, the use of pesticides on foods and the undue influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies over doctors and government regulators.
During his March 6 confirmation hearing, Makary repeatedly assured Republican and Democratic senators he would follow the “scientific process” at FDA. But he wouldn’t commit to specific actions on a host of hot-button issues, including the abortion pill mifepristone, which has been ensnared in politics since a 2021 decision by the FDA making it available by mail.
“I have no preconceived plans on mifepristone policy except to take a hard look at the data and to meet with the professional career scientists at the FDA who have reviewed the data,” Makary told Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the health committee.
Bhattacharya, a physician and professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, was also a critic of vaccine mandates during the pandemic.
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Bhattacharya was one of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 open letter maintaining that lockdowns were causing irreparable harm.
The document — which came before the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and during the first Trump administration — also promoted herd immunity. Protection should focus instead on people at higher risk, the document said.
“I think the lockdowns were the single biggest public health mistake,” Bhattacharya said in March 2021 during a panel discussion convened by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Great Barrington Declaration was embraced by some in the first Trump administration, even as it was widely denounced by disease experts. Then-NIH director Dr. Francis Collins called it dangerous and “not mainstream science.”
“I love the NIH but post-pandemic, America’s biomedical sciences are at a crossroads,” Bhattacharya told senators at his March 5 confirmation hearing.
He laid out priorities including a bigger focus on chronic diseases, including diabetes and obesity. But he also said the agency needs to be more open to scientific dissent, saying influential NIH leaders early in the pandemic shut down his own criticisms about responses to COVID-19.
While Republicans warmly welcomed Bhattacharya, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who chairs the Senate health committee, pressed him about vaccine skepticism that is fueling a large measles outbreak that already killed a child in Texas.
Cassidy strenuously urged Bhattacharya not to waste NIH dollars reexamining whether there’s a link between standard childhood vaccines and autism. There’s no link — something that’s already been proven in multiple studies involving thousands of children, the senator stressed.
Bhattacharya called the measles death a tragedy and said he “fully supported” children being vaccinated but added that additional research might convince skeptical parents.
“People still think Elvis is alive,” a frustrated Cassidy responded. He told Bhattacharya any attempt to revisit the debunked issue would deprive funds to study autism’s real cause.
Bhattacharya, who faced restrictions on social media platforms because of his views, was also a plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri, a Supreme Court case contending that federal officials improperly suppressed conservative views on social media as part of their efforts to combat misinformation. The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in that case.
After Elon Musk acquired Twitter, later renamed X, in 2022, he invited Bhattacharya to the company’s headquarters to learn more about how his views had been restricted on the platform.
Bhattacharya argued that vaccine mandates that barred unvaccinated people from activities and workplaces undermined Americans’ trust in the public health system.
Headquartered in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, the FDA is responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs, vaccines and medical devices, as well as a swath of other consumer goods, including food, cosmetics and vaping products.
The NIH funds medical research on vaccines, cancer and other diseases through competitive grants to researchers at institutions across the nation. The agency also conducts its own research with thousands of scientists working at NIH labs in Bethesda, Maryland.
