WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Dr. Marty Makary, nominated by President Donald Trump to become the next commissioner of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), appeared before the Senate last week for his confirmation hearings, during which he pledged impartial, science-based reviews on everything from abortion pills to vaccine policy to food chemicals.
Makary is the chief of Islet Transplant Surgery at Johns Hopkins University, a nationally respected medical authority on medical and scientific topics, and a prominent voice of dissent from the 2020 medical establishment’s COVID-19 orthodoxy.
CNN and NPR reported that, during his testimony, Makary emphasized that rebuilding trust in public health institutions would be his overarching objective. “If we have the cure for pancreatic cancer, but only 40% of the public is going to come in and take it because the rest don’t trust us, then that medication is only 40% effective,” he explained. “So, I think we fight bad ideas with more ideas” rather than “censorship” of scientific opinions.
On the subject of abortion pills, which new Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says Trump has asked him to study the dangers of, Makary claimed he has “no preconceived plans” but to “take a solid, hard look at the data and to meet with the professional career scientists who have reviewed the data at the FDA, and to build an expert coalition to review the ongoing data which is required to be collected as a part of the REMS [Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy] program.”
Makary took a similar stance on vaccines, standing by his criticism of the guidance process for COVID boosters while affirming that vaccines generally “save lives.” He added that he wants to review the ethics policy for vaccine review committee meetings, to prevent conflicts of interest like a “cozy relationship between industry and the regulators that are supposed to be regulating the products.”
On the subject of food ingredients, a particular passion of Kennedy’s, Makary said, “We have to look at the totality of every single thing in school lunch programs, in the diet of our nation’s children.” A “consolidation of the scientific research” on everything from food dyes to seed oils would help clarify health questions surrounding them, he said.
Easy access to and interstate distribution of abortion pills is one of the abortion lobby’s most potent tools for perpetuating abortion-on-demand post-Roe v. Wade that they are aggressively pursuing regardless of the risks to the women they are supposedly serving.
In November 2022, Operation Rescue reported that a net decrease of 36 abortion facilities in 2022 led to the lowest number in almost 50 years, yet the chemical abortion business “surged” with 64 percent of new facilities built last year specializing in dispensing mifepristone and misoprostol. Citing data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, STAT says mifepristone “accounts for roughly half of all abortions in the U.S.”
Whether the issue will be resolved manually remains to be seen. President Trump has taken a number of pro-life actions since returning to office, but he said on the campaign trail that he would not enforce federal law prohibiting abortion pills from being dispensed by mail. Pro-lifers hope Kennedy and Makary’s statements about reviewing the science may mark the beginning of a reversal.
Meanwhile, the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 38,476 deaths, 220,384 hospitalizations, 22,233 heart attacks, and 28,897 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of February 28, among other ailments. U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) CDC researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.
An analysis of 99 million people across eight countries published in February 2024 in the journal Vaccine “observed significantly higher risks of myocarditis following the first, second and third doses” of mRNA-based COVID vaccines, as well as signs of increased risk of “pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis,” and other “potential safety signals that require further investigation.” That April, the CDC was forced to release by court order 780,000 previously undisclosed reports of serious adverse reactions.
In January 2025, a long-awaited Florida grand jury report on the COVID vaccine manufacturers found that while cases of vaccine-related myocarditis and pericarditis were “very rare” and resolved without “permanent damage” based on the data it had access to, such events do occur, and there are “profound and serious issues” in pharmaceutical companies’ review process, including reluctance to share what evidence of adverse events they did find.
All eyes are currently on Trump and his health team. As one of the country’s most vocal critics of the COVID establishment and vaccines more generally, Kennedy’s nomination brought hope that the second Trump administration will take a critical reassessment of the shots that the returning president has previously embraced, although most of Kennedy’s comments since joining Trump have focused on other issues, such as conventional vaccines and harmful food additives, and during confirmation hearings, he called Operation Warp Speed an “extraordinary accomplishment.”
Trump has given mixed signals as to the prospects of reconsidering the shots and has nominated both critics and defenders of establishment COVID measures for a number of administration roles.