By The Defender Staff
Trump’s Surgeon General Pick, Casey Means, Still Lacks Votes for Confirmation
Casey Means, President Donald Trump’s pick for surgeon general, does not yet have the votes for confirmation following a testy Senate health committee hearing on her nomination Wednesday. Senators of both parties pressed Means on her views about vaccines at the hearing. Means did not commit to promoting them and now has to convince at least two skeptical Republicans to back her nomination: Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who told POLITICO they haven’t decided how they’ll vote.
Winning the approval of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is almost certainly a prerequisite for confirmation. The panel is split between 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats, so any one Republican could sink Means’ chances if Democrats, as expected, vote against.
The Republican-controlled Senate has turned back very few of Trump’s nominees. But one of the first was Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Like the surgeon general, the CDC director serves within the health department. The White House withdrew the nomination of former Florida GOP Rep. Dave Weldon last March after Murkowski and Collins raised concerns about his vaccine views. The surgeon general is the nation’s top doctor and a high profile spokesperson on public health.
C.D.C.’s New Acting Director Draws Unexpected Praise From Agency Staff
In his first week leading two of the nation’s health agencies, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has been met with praise and gratitude from federal employees — an unexpected reception for a scientist who spent much of the last few years facing scorn from most other public health experts. Dr. Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, was last week named the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A medical economist and former Stanford University professor, he replaced Jim O’Neill, a Silicon Valley executive with no medical training.
Like most officials in the Trump administration, Dr. Bhattacharya was staunchly opposed to mandates for Covid vaccines, but unlike many, he has not questioned the safety of childhood vaccines.
In meetings with C.D.C. staff this week, Dr. Bhattacharya offered to publicly endorse immunizations in general and the measles vaccine in particular; extolled the importance of prevention efforts against H.I.V.; and promised to try to extend remote work accommodations, according to several C.D.C. employees with knowledge of the discussions. (The employees asked not to be named for fear of repercussions from the Trump administration.)
No Major ‘Reactions’ at FDA’s Food Allergy Expert Panel
The latest FDA expert panel gave Commissioner Marty Makary, MD, MPH, a chance to sound off on issues close to his heart, but ultimately proved to be a strong science-based forum with some of the world’s premier experts on food allergy. In his opening statement, Makary railed against medicine for being wrong about recommending peanut avoidance in early life — the topic of the opening chapter of his 2024 book “Blind Spots.”
“We know that we made a terrible tragic mistake as a medical profession giving parents the wrong recommendation to avoid peanut and other allergens until a child turns 3 years of age,” Makary said. He also homed in on the rising tide of food allergies over the past 25 years, the causes of which haven’t been thoroughly parsed.
“When we were kids, hardly anyone had a peanut or food allergy. Something happened,” Makary said, adding that he believes possible causes include “changes in the environment, changes in what people eat, exposures, changes to the microbiome.”
It’s not clear what Makary meant by “exposures,” but vaccines were never directly singled out as a potential cause during the 2-hour meeting. Instead, top academic experts in food allergy delivered evidence-based facts about food allergy, alongside leaders from the NIH and the FDA.
US FDA to Offer Bonuses to Staff for Faster Drug Reviews, Source Says
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration plans to give quarterly bonuses to scientific staff for quicker completion of drug reviews, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. Staff reviewers could receive bonuses worth several thousand dollars per quarter for high-quality work completed ahead of schedule, according to the person familiar with the plans.
Bloomberg News first reported on the development and said the program is expected to be announced at an internal FDA meeting later on Thursday. The initiative follows the Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher program, launched in June, which speeds FDA decisions on critical drugs to one to two months from the standard six months.
FDA has awarded up to 18 vouchers so far, and granted its second approval under the program on Thursday to Boehringer Ingelheim’s lung cancer drug Hernexeos. The agency is also working to hire more than 1,000 new scientists as part of a broader effort to accelerate drug evaluations.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary Defends Rare Disease Drug Rejections, Vinay Prasad
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary defended the agency’s recent rejections of rare disease drugs in an interview with CNBC on Thursday. He also defended top FDA official Vinay Prasad, who oversees the center that rejected many of those drugs.
In his defense, Makary appeared to reference the FDA’s stance on a gene therapy made by UniQure to treat Huntington’s disease, a rare neurodegenerative condition. The company is still in talks with the agency on whether its data are sufficient for review, and has said the FDA suddenly changed course on whether its clinical trial design is adequate.
“There was a product where the researchers drilled a burr hole, literally a hole in people’s skulls, to inject intrathecally into the ventricle,” Makary said. “At the end of the randomization period, it found no benefit, and yet, this is one of the drugs that we were pressured to approve.”
Despite U.S. Pull out From WHO, Reps Were (Virtually) at the Table for Big Flu Confab
For the past week, about 50 flu scientists from around the world were crammed into a conference room at a Hilton hotel in Istanbul, Turkey. Their goal was to design a flu shot that will confer the best protection for the next flu season —starting in the fall of 2026. Each day, they pored over reams of data — about how the virus is evolving worldwide, how well last year’s shot performed, and which strains might be easiest to mass produce for a vaccine.
Friday morning, the WHO announced the strains recommended by the committee for next year’s flu shot. The meeting, convened by the World Health Organization twice a year, is a critical moment for the WHO’s Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System.
It’s also “really tedious,” says Dr. Dan Jernigan, who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases from 2023 to 2025. “In order for you to make the best choice for what to put in the vaccine, you have to review a lot.”
World Economic Forum CEO Quits After Epstein Ties Scrutinized
The president and CEO of the World Economic Forum, Borge Brende, said on Thursday he was stepping down, a few weeks after the forum launched an independent investigation into his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Brende, who became president of the WEF in 2017, announced his decision in a statement following disclosures from the U.S. Justice Department that showed the Norwegian had three business dinners with Epstein and had also communicated with the disgraced financier via email and text message.
“After careful consideration, I have decided to step down as President and CEO of the World Economic Forum. My time here, spanning 8-1/2 years, has been profoundly rewarding,” he said.
“I am grateful for the incredible collaboration with my colleagues, partners, and constituents, and I believe now is the right moment for the Forum to continue its important work without distractions,” added Brende, a former Norwegian foreign minister. Brende made no mention of Epstein.
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