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Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said Thursday that Americans would welcome a move by US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to withdraw the government’s recommendation for children to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has reportedly weighed reversing the CDC’s recommendation.
“Most Americans do not believe in the COVID booster shot for young healthy children at this point,” Makary said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit. “If [Kennedy] does something with the COVID vaccine in children, I think it’ll be warmly welcomed by many Americans.”
Makary was a vocal critic of the government’s federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and opposed vaccine mandates. He diverges from the health secretary’s view on vaccine effectiveness, however, reiterating Thursday: “Vaccines save lives, and any death from a vaccine-preventable illness is a tragedy.” But he did note that he had not taken any COVID boosters.
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Makary, a former surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, stood alongside Kennedy Tuesday to announce an initiative to replace certain artificial food dyes in US products with the natural alternatives companies offer in other countries. The health department is specifically targeting petroleum-based dyes that some scientists have suggested are linked to diabetes, cancer, obesity, and other health-related issues. While there is no outright ban, “the industry has voluntarily agreed” to participate, according to Kennedy, although companies’ willingness remains to be seen.
This week, Makary also said the FDA is exploring a new pathway for rare disease drug approval, allowing certain medicines for treating a small number of people to enter the market faster. The framework being floated would allow proposed drugs that make sense on paper to go straight to treating patients without a randomized controlled trial.
The Semafor View
The boundaryless pools of money that defined finance in the last 20 years are retreating, and capital is becoming a national resource to be protected. Public and private markets seem set to converge: Where they meet — and which firms stake out territory — could determine finance’s winners over the next decade.