MAHA Madness Continues...

As Dr. Vinay Prasad leaves his position as the vaccine chief at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the frontrunner to take over this FDA role is also deeply aligned with the MAHA movement, having falsely labeled mRNA vaccines “experimental genetic technology” and comparing COVID pandemic response to the theocratic rule of the Iranian Regime. 

Dr. Houman David Hemmati is a Jewish-Iranian who came to the US during the Iranian revolution. He is an ophthalmologist and a biotech veteran of several companies focused on vision loss. Like Prasad, Hemmati lacks experience in vaccine development. Important Context reviewed Hemmati’s social media posts, finding public health and vaccine skepticism and an alignment with Trump.  

Read our latest on the vaccine chief frontrunner here. 

Also, National Institute of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month in a move that largely broke precedent. While some public health leaders have waded into politics before or after their tenure in the Department of Health and Human Services, Bhattacharya is one of the few public health officials in recent decades who has embraced this partisanship despite his nominally scientific role.

“As a political appointee, NIH Directors have appeared at political events, usually around specific health-related issues where their insights and endorsements of specific policies may be politically helpful,” said Dr. Jeremy Berg, former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH. “But I do not know of other examples where an NIH Director has spoken at such political and partisan events, just to speak about his vision or alleged accomplishments.”

Indeed, having been entrenched in political right-wing networks during the COVID-19 pandemic,  Bhattacharya has more in common with the CPAC crowd than other scientific and public health figures. 

Important Context and AJI have been tracking the politicization of HHS for years. Read our latest on Bhattacharya’s  CPAC appearance here. 

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