MAHA minefield: Drug safety regulators trip over Trump whisperer, pharma boosters, agency old guard

The agencies under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy are getting squeezed between old-guard staff who object to Trump administration priorities on one side, and prominent conservatives and business interests on the other.

The dynamic is creating a minefield between Make America Healthy Again and deregulation for current leaders and new appointees.

The first Senate-confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Monarez, was sworn in by Kennedy Thursday, four months after President Trump suddenly yanked the nomination of former GOP Rep. Dave Weldon, who blamed pharmaceutical industry opposition and pharma-favorite GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy – chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, that would have held Weldon's confirmation hearing.  

Just 10 days after his appointment as director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, George Tidmarsh got an unexpected side gig as acting director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research in the wake of Vinay Prasad's sudden exit following a rash of attacks by pharma boosters and a conservative influencer.

Some voices are suggesting Weldon replace Prasad, given the position doesn't require Senate confirmation and Weldon has long shown interest in possible side effects from measles, mumps and rubella vaccination including autism, the subject of a 2004 study whose author admitted 10 years later to hiding a "statistically significant" association in African-American toddlers.

His supporters include Texas physician and medical freedom activist Mary Talley Bowden, an early casualty of COVID-19 treatment shibboleths. She compelled the FDA in court to remove X posts falsely implying COVID treatment drug ivermectin was only safe for livestock.

Weldon already has a man inside the house, so to speak, MSNBC warned last week. His former legislative director, Stuart Burns, "a key operator within the effort" to connect vaccines to autism, was named a "senior advisor" in April and had taken a leading role in reconstituting the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that Kennedy had fired en masse.

National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, meanwhile, is fending off a mutiny by nearly 500 self-identified staff — some perhaps laid off in reduction-in-force plans — based in part on an alleged "list of banned words" in grants recommended for funding, especially those related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

"This one is really frustrating," Bhattacharya told Just the News. He informed representatives of the "Bethesda Declaration," named after NIH's Maryland home base, at their July 21 meeting that "I ordered there be no banned list" to his staff months ago, but some program officers "took it upon themselves" to create ad hoc, unofficial lists. 

He is skeptical of funding DEI research that isn't "good science," though, whether because the hypotheses aren't testable or it's "yet one more study documenting a big difference" in disease prevalence between groups instead of how to reduce prevalence across the board.

Federal judges keep blocking NIH cuts to DEI grants and an alleged "slush fund" for research institutions known as indirect cost rates. The former prompted the administration to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court on the same grounds it allowed for DEI-related education grant cuts, and the latter is pending in appeals court.

Biden regulator overruled staff, advisers twice on drug Trump regulator paused

Disinvited from a pharmacist conference two years ago for repeatedly trashing the scientific evidence for the Biden administration's COVID-19 policy, Prasad became a target of President Trump whisperer Laura Loomer two days after the FDA leaned on Sarepta to pause distributing its Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy drug pending investigation of three patient deaths.

Loomer branded Prasad a "leftist saboteur" for his well-known progressive politics, and The Wall Street Journal editorial board started trashing him a week later, dubbing Prasad a "Bernie Sanders Acolyte in MAHA Drag" emblematic of Democratic "paternalism" and cheering when the FDA reversed course and Prasad left.

The editorials "put a tremendous amount of pressure on Vinay" and Kennedy couldn't save him, an administration "senior health official" told The Free Press. "It was Big Pharma that got him canned," for "protecting kids from a bad drug," though Loomer also "played a part."

The White House implied Prasad was out of step with Trump's agenda, telling The Free Press it was "not only appropriate, but critical for the administration to recruit the most qualified and experienced staffers who are totally aligned" with the MAGA movement.

Prasad's onetime colleagues at the Sensible Medicine newsletter defended him against the barrage, pointing to another DMD treatment his FDA rejected for a weak trial and wondering whether there's anyone "more equipped and more dedicated to vetting treatments" while admitting "he has at times been brash, nasty, and insulting" on social media.

Just as MSNBC fears what Weldon's former staffer will do in the CDC, the Journal worries that Prasad's interim replacement Tidmarsh might carry on his agenda.

A former Stanford colleague of Bhattacharya, Tidmarsh just this year trashed Prasad's predecessor Peter Marks as an industry stooge in part for overruling FDA career scientists and advisers to first approve and then expand Sarepta's DMD drug Elevydis.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, who approved the requested Sarepta pause with Prasad, effusively praised Tidmarsh when CNBC pressed him on the departure of Prasad, whom Makary called a "genius" while emphasizing the Journal blamed him for some drug decisions his center doesn't even handle.

Tidmarsh has "impeccable credentials," he said: "MD, PhD, double fellowship-trained in neonatology and oncology, and led La Jolla Therapeutics, so he is a drug developer himself. … He knows the FDA from both sides," Makary said, reiterating Tidmarsh and not Prasad was already its top drug regulator.

Don't politicize science, come to our anti-Trump rally?

NIH's Bhattacharya faced his latest challenge from disgruntled current and former staff who published a laundry list of complaints in June about threatening academic freedom and public health by halting grants, "dissolving foreign collaborations," imposing an "arbitrary" indirect cost rate cap of 15% and firing "essential" staff.

Chemical and Engineering News reported on his July 21 meeting with their representatives based on attendees' accounts, with an anonymous staffer claiming a list of banned words can be inferred because grants were rejected for including words that aren't relevant to administration priorities. 

Staffer Mollie Manier said program officers were helping applicants filter out words and phrases that might cause problems in the final review and that Bhattacharya objects to setting aside funding for specific groups or awarding it based on race, ethnicity or gender identity.

Bhattacharya told Just the News he hadn't seen the report but gave his own account, including that he had suggested the meeting because "these are my colleagues."

He thought of it "mainly as a listening session" in which attendees shared their "differences of ideas," especially opposition to canceling DEI grants. Bhattacharya agreed with some criticisms including the inability to order "large equipment," a problem he was already working on, and said they have "legitimate points to make" about "operational challenges." 

He was surprised and "a little disappointed" when they asked Bhattacharya to attend their rally "against Trump's attacks on lifesaving research" with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., immediately after the meeting. "If they're going to politicize it, I'm going to be less likely to talk to them."