Alice Oseman FactsTo the Editor: Mehmet Oz, a board-certified heart surgeon turned talk show host and lifestyle guru, is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal health care agency that covers more than a third of Americans. Although he made his reputation as a surgeon, he made his fortune as a salesman. He is perhaps best known for his TV show, Dr. Oz, on which he portrayed himself as a trusted doctor and dispensed nutritional and lifestyle advice, conveniently failing to make clear to his audience just how closely he worked with the companies he pitched. He repeatedly promoted products of questionable medical value and was named in lawsuits that alleged he made misleading claims on the show. Several of the companies he has promoted are structured as multilevel marketing businesses whose practices have repeatedly drawn the attention of federal regulators. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Oz appeared on Fox News more than 25 times to promote hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine — an antimalarial drug also used for treating lupus — as a cure for COVID, despite lacking evidence that it was safe or effective. CNBC recently reported that Oz owns at least $630,000 in stock in pharmaceutical companies that distribute hydroxychloroquine. On top of the unverified drug claims, Oz was criticized for comments he made on Sean Hannity’s show. “I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing that the opening of schools may only cost us two or three percent in terms of total mortality,” Oz said, suggesting that putting children back in school — even as cases skyrocketed — was a “very appetizing opportunity.” Oz was, and probably still is, involved in marketing partnerships with Novo Nordisk. As head of CMS, he’d be in charge of making decisions that could be very lucrative for pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Oz also has investments in CVS and UnitedHealth, companies that could reap major financial gains based on Oz’s decisions. His ongoing financial ties to Big Pharma and health care companies are a conflict of interest. What incentive does he have to do the job the American people need done by the person in this position? Furthermore, in addition to these conflicts of interest, Oz is a proponent of Medicare privatization, which would destroy Medicare as we know it and enrich the insurance corporations he’s invested in. In recent years, Oz has dived into far-right politics, dropping the veil of neutrality he stood behind for most of his career. Since his unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate, Oz routinely faces criticism for his motives, beliefs and questionable medical record — including a recently resurfaced scandal involving the cruel treatment of animals by Columbia University research teams that he oversaw. Dr. Oz, he gained fame for promoting questionable “supplements” and quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain. Mehmet Oz is an inappropriate choice to run CMS. His history of promoting questionable “supplements” and quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain, and the conflicts of interest created by his continued involvement and financial ties to pharmaceutical and health care companies make him unfit for that position. I urge Senators Moran and Marshall to block the nomination of Mehmet Oz as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Sharon McGinness Larned
Italy shares higher at close of trade; Investing.com Italy 40 up 0.61%Yocan UNI 3.0: Innovation Meets Futurism in Vaping
Washington, Nov 23 (AP) The people that president-elect Donald Trump has selected to lead federal health agencies in his second administration include a retired congressman, a surgeon and a former talk-show host. All of them could play pivotal roles in fulfilling a new political agenda that could change how the government goes about safeguarding Americans' health — from health care and medicines to food safety and science research. And if Congress approves, at the helm of the team as Department of Health and Human Services secretary will be prominent environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine organiser Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Also Read | Pakistan Violence: 15 Killed, 25 Injured in Fresh Sectarian Clashes in Kurram, 2 Days After Attack on Passenger Vehicles. By and large, the nominees don't have experience running large bureaucratic agencies, but they know how to talk about health on TV. Centres for Medicare and Medicaid pick Dr. Mehmet Oz hosted a talk show for 13 years and is a well-known wellness and lifestyle influencer. The pick for the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary, and for surgeon general, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, are frequent Fox News contributors. Many on the list were critical of COVID-19 measures like masking and booster vaccinations for young people. Some of them have ties to Florida like many of Trump's other Cabinet nominees: CDC pick Dr. Dave Weldon represented the state in Congress for 14 years and is affiliated with a medical group on the state's Atlantic coast. Nesheiwat's brother-in-law is Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., tapped by Trump as national security adviser. Also Read | Gautam Adani Indicted: US SEC Summons Indian Billionaire's Nephew Sagar in Bribery Case. Here's a look at the nominees' potential role in carrying out what Kennedy says is the task to “reorganise” agencies, which have an overall USD 1.7 billion budget; employ 80,000 scientists, researchers, doctors and other officials; and affect the lives of all Americans. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention The Atlanta-based CDC, with a USD 9.2 billion core budget, is charged with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats. Kennedy has long attacked vaccines and criticised the CDC, repeatedly alleging corruption at the agency. He said on a 2023 podcast that there is "no vaccine that is safe and effective”, and urged people to resist the CDC's guidelines on if and when kids should get vaccinated. Decades ago, Kennedy found common ground with Weldon, the 71-year-old nominee to run the CDC who served in the Army and worked as an internal medicine doctor before he represented a central Florida congressional district from 1995 to 2009. Starting in the early 2000s, Weldon had a prominent part in a debate about whether there was a relationship between a vaccine preservative called thimerosal and autism. He was a founding member of the Congressional Autism Caucus and tried to ban thimerosal from all vaccines. Kennedy, then a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defence Council, believed there was a tie between thimerosal and autism and also charged that the government hid documents showing the danger. Since 2001, all vaccines manufactured for the US market and routinely recommended for children 6 years or younger have contained no thimerosal or only trace amounts, with the exception of inactivated influenza vaccine. Meanwhile, study after study after study found no evidence that thimerosal caused autism. Weldon's congressional voting record suggests he may go along with Republican efforts to downsize the CDC, including to eliminate the National Centre for Injury Prevention and Control, which works on topics like drownings, drug overdoses and shooting deaths. Weldon also voted to ban federal funding for needle-exchange programs as an approach to reduce overdoses, and the National Rifle Association gave him an “A” rating for his pro-gun rights voting record. Food and Drug Administration Kennedy is extremely critical of the FDA, which has 18,000 employees and is responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs, vaccines and other medical products — as well as overseeing cosmetics, electronic cigarettes and most foods. Makary, Trump's pick to run the FDA, is closely aligned with Kennedy on several topics. The professor at Johns Hopkins University who is a trained surgeon and cancer specialist has decried the overprescribing of drugs, the use of pesticides on foods and the undue influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies over doctors and government regulators. Kennedy has suggested he'll clear our “entire” FDA departments and also recently threatened to fire FDA employees for “aggressive suppression” of a host of unsubstantiated products and therapies, including stem cells, raw milk, psychedelics and discredited COVID-era treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Makary's contrarian views during the COVID-19 pandemic including the need for masking and giving young kids COVID vaccine boosters. But anything Makary and Kennedy might want to do when it comes to unwinding FDA regulations or revoking long-standing vaccine and drug approvals would be challenging. The agency has lengthy requirements for removing medicines from the market, which are based on federal laws passed by Congress. Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services The agency provides health care coverage for more than 160 million people through Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, and also sets Medicare payment rates for hospitals, doctors and other providers. With a USD 1.1 trillion budget and more than 6,000 employees, Oz has a massive agency to run if confirmed — and an agency that Kennedy hasn't talked about much when it comes to his plans. While Trump tried to scrap the Affordable Care Act in his first term, Kennedy has not taken aim at it yet. But he has been critical of Medicaid and Medicare for covering expensive weight-loss drugs — though they're not widely covered by either. Trump said during his campaign that he would protect Medicare, which provides insurance for older Americans. Oz has endorsed expanding Medicare Advantage — a privately run version of Medicare that is popular but also a source of widespread fraud — in an AARP questionnaire during his failed 2022 bid for a US Senate seat in Pennsylvania and in a 2020 Forbes op-ed with a former Kaiser Permanente CEO. Oz also said in a Washington Examiner op-ed with three co-writers that aging healthier and living longer could help fix the US budget deficit because people would work longer and add more to the gross domestic product. Neither Trump nor Kennedy have said much about Medicaid, the insurance programme for low-income Americans. Trump's first administration reshaped the program by allowing states to introduce work requirements for recipients. Surgeon general Kennedy doesn't appear to have said much publicly about what he'd like to see from surgeon general position, which is the nation's top doctor and oversees 6,000 US Public Health Service Corps members. The surgeon general has little administrative power, but can be an influential government spokesperson on what counts as a public health danger and what to do about it — suggesting things like warning labels for products and issuing advisories. The current surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, declared gun violence as a public health crisis in June. Trump's pick, Nesheiwat, is employed as a New York City medical director with CityMD, a group of urgent care facilities in the New York and New Jersey area, and has been at City MD for 12 years. She also has appeared on Fox News and other TV shows, authored a book on the “transformative power of prayer” in her medical career and endorses a brand of vitamin supplements. She encouraged COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, calling them “a gift from God” in a February 2021 Fox News op-ed, as well as anti-viral pills like Paxlovid. In a 2019 Q and A with the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation, Nesheiwat said she is a “firm believer in preventive medicine” and “can give a dissertation on hand-washing alone”. National Institutes of Health As of Saturday, Trump had not yet named his choice to lead the National Institutes of Health, which funds medical research through grants to researchers across the nation and conducts its own research. It has a USD 48 billion budget. Kennedy has said he'd pause drug development and infectious disease research to shift the focus to chronic diseases. He'd like to keep NIH funding from researchers with conflicts of interest, and criticized the agency in 2017 for what he said was not doing enough research into the role of vaccines in autism — an idea that has long been debunked. (AP) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)