Marty Makary: Is the First Good Pick for FDA commissioner in a long time

 by Vinay Prasad

Marty Makary, author of 3 best selling books, Johns Hopkins professor and surgeon is nominated to be FDA commissioner….

OR

Marty Makary, Fox News contributor, anti-lockdown person who once shook Donald Trump’s hand, and grabbed a vaccine out of someone’s arm before the syringe could be deployed, shouting “no, be gone, autism juice,”, is a nominated to be FDA commissioner

The media faces a choice in how they frame Marty, and they always choose the option biased against him. Take a look

And

They left out the part: Marty was right to oppose these things. Lockdowns served little purpose, based on mobility data, and vaccine mandates were unethical. You cannot mandate a medical product that has no third party benefits, and this did not.

Back to the media:

“Contrarian” - the news has no data on which views were held by more scientists and which are contrarian. They never did a survey. Marty was right about all these issues. Kids didn’t need covid vaccines, and community masking did not work. Masking a 2 year old is the real conspiracy theory that only a tin-foil hat wearer would believe in, and yet this was CDC and AAP guidance.

One of Marty’s sins is predicting herd immunity, apparently.

You know who else did that?

The media has a serious credibility problem. Merely because Trump nominated Marty, they oppose him. Instead, here is how I would write the article about Marty

Marty Makary, distinguished Hopkins professor, surgeon, best-selling author, and original thinker nominated to be FDA commissioner.

Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins Surgeon, and professor, has been nominated to serve as FDA commissioner. 20 years ago, Marty was first author on the surgery checklist paper, which was later made into a bestselling book by Atul Gawande,

Marty has a long history of pushing back on captured and corporate interests in medicine. His books, Unaccountable and the Price we Pay, are both aimed at making health care better and more affordable for consumers.

During the COVID19 pandemic, Marty gained prominence for questioning government dogma that many were scared to tackle. When the government wrongly pushed masking toddlers and vaccine mandates, Marty stood up to say that those were inappropriate. He defended nurses who got COVID on the wards, and then were fired for not getting a vaccine they did not need, which did not benefit their patients.

Marty’s positions took real courage at a time when his colleagues kept a low profile, fearful of that their tenured jobs would be threatened. Marty is also known for hundreds of academic articles, in addition to a 2024 book Blind Spots, which is a top book according to Amazon’s nonfiction 2024 list.

Colleagues of Marty have this to say about him:

“I have not always agreed with Marty,” says Vinay Prasad, professor and physician at UCSF, “years ago he wrote a paper on medical error and I wrote a rebuttal.”

“But when he met me, he raised the topic, and wanted to learn more about how he might improve the work. He asked me what I thought about the broader thesis of medical error, and we reached a lot of common ground.”

“Marty is not like 99% of academics. He thinks for himself. Naturally, two people will never agree on everything, and no one is infallable, but Marty got the most important things right on covid:

1. Natural immunity provides strong protection against severe disease from reinfections

2. Schools should be open

3. Kids should not wear cloth masks

4. Community mask mandates have no data

5. Vaccines should target the elderly, nonimmune and not young, or those who had covid

6. Myocarditis is an important safety signal

7. VITT is game over for J&J

8. After vaccination, we have to go back to normal

9. CDC should run RCTs of NPIs

10. Peter Marks at FDA inappropriately pushed out Gruber and Krause

11. Scientists should have more humility

12. There is a fundamental conflict between Fauci giving out grants and setting policy- no one will criticize him

13. Covid began in an NIH funded lab in Wuhan, and we must stop GOF research”

On these issues Marty, and not his peers, was right.”

That’s how I would write the article. In short, Marty is the first nominee for FDA commissioner I have seen in my entire life who has ever said anything that went against corporate interests. He had courage to stand up for the weak and powerless during COVID. He is not a pharma-shill. He has true integrity. He is a good communicator.

He did not get everything right during COVID; no one did, but his batting average is pretty damn good. More importantly, his decisions are guided by his reading of evidence, and he is open to refine his thinking. That makes him something rare in medicine: a scientist.

https://www.drvinayprasad.com/p/marty-makary-is-the-first-good-pick