Trump's NIH and FDA nominees might be the best we could hope for
Watching last week's confirmation hearings for Jayanta Bhattacharya and Marty Makary, President Donald Trump's nominees to lead the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, respectively, I was struck by how normal the candidates were.
Yes, I said normal — and qualified. Unlike their future boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who in his own hearings struggled with basic questions about Medicaid and Medicare and refused to disavow anti-vaccine conspiracy theories — these candidates grounded their answers in facts and science. They were well-versed in what their agencies did and had intriguing ideas for how improve them.
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