Scott Gottlieb, who was Food and Drug Administration commissioner in Trump 1.0, is campaigning against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s nomination to be Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new Trump administration. In an interview on CNBC on Friday, Gottlieb said he has been meeting with senators and that there is "skepticism in the Republican caucus [on RFK Jr.’s nomination], more than the press is reporting right now.”
Gottlieb highlighted three arguments against RFK, Jr.
Gottlieb said he's enlisting Republican senators in his cause to sink RFK Jr.'s nomination using three core arguments: Large agricultural interests who could spend big against incumbent Republicans in future elections due to RFK Jr.'s positions on the American food industry, his past support for abortion rights and his opposition to childhood vaccines ruffling the feathers of "public health-minded" senators.
In reality, he only has one argument.
“You’re gonna see, remember, you’re gonna see measles, mumps and rubella vaccination rates go down. And like I said, if we lose another five percent [vaccinated], which could happen in the next year or two, we will see large measles outbreaks,” Gottlieb predicted, referring to the MMR vaccination the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends, one of more than a dozen on the CDC’s schedule.
You've seen this argument before with Social Security.
It is the argument that the unscrupulous make when they have nothing else to work with.
In my view, Gottlieb is the poster child for what is wrong in American medicine. From 2003 to 2007, he worked at the FDA and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. From there, he went to an investment fund specializing in emerging medical companies and sat on the boards of at least three pharmaceutical companies. In 2017, he became FDA commissioner. Now he's back on the board of Pfizer. During COVID, he was in favor of lockdowns, masking, social isolation of the vulnerable, and social distancing. He opposed federal vaccine mandates but supported the same mandates at the local level.
Gottlieb was also one of the prime movers behind the ban on social media platforms, particularly Twitter, of former New York Times reporter and novelist Alex Berenson for challenging conventional wisdom.
There is no doubt that a guy like RFK Jr. will upset more than a few applecarts in the pharmaceutical manufacturing and regulation complex.
He may even ban former regulators from working in the industries they regulated for a period of years.
While Gottlieb has the right to talk to as many senators as he wishes, I would suggest that his talk of a polio epidemic is more to scare than enlighten them. His real fear is that RFK, Jr., will upset the comfy, one-hand-washes-the-other that exists between regulators and regulated industries and the high-paying revolving door that shuttles regulators to regulated industries and then back to regulatory agencies.