Dr. Peter Lurie

Can Casey Means, Trump’s surgeon general pick, convince the country that RFK will Make America Healthy Again? | CNN Politics The Stanford educated medical doctor has deep ties to MAHA but will have to convince senators and mainstream Americans of her qualifications as the nation’s top doctor.

As I say to @owermohle.bsky.social here, Means is monumentally unqualified for the job as Surgeon General. Even if she were qualified on paper, Means has taken some breathtakingly misinformed positions on matters of public health, including on birth control pills, raw milk, and the causes of autism.

Assault on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—Budget Cuts, Political Control, and the Erosion of Trust This JAMA Forum discusses measures the Trump administration has taken against the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that include budget cuts and program eliminations, workforce reductions ...

RFK has mounted a full assault on @CDCgov-- slashing funding & staff, & and turned the agency into a political tool that can no longer be fully trusted on public health recommendations, especially vaccines.

Out today in JAMA Health Forum

Peter Lurie CSPI

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Assault on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—Budget Cuts, Political Control, and the Erosion of Trust This JAMA Forum discusses measures the Trump administration has taken against the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that include budget cuts and program eliminations, workforce reductions ...

The CDC is being severely weakened by the Trump administration, and with tightening political control, public trust in the CDC is diminishing. Read my latest in @jamahealthforum.com with colleague Larry Gostin.

America's strip malls and Main Streets are filling up with these "hydration spas," with little evidence that they have any health benefits as well as little regulation at the state/federal level.

Like the previous report, this should not be taken seriously as science. But as a political document, we have not seen the last of it.

Secretary Kennedy is right that conflict of interest is an important issue, but he is wrong that it is present at substantial levels on HHS vaccine advisory committees.

At RFK, Jr.'s disastrous hearing yesterday, Senator Bill Cassidy cited a study co-authored by CSPI president @drpeterlurie.bsky.social and USC's @profgenkanter.bsky.social regarding conflicts of interest. Is RFK, Jr. right when he says that 97% of members of vaccine panels had conflicts of interest?

Secretary Kennedy has chosen to foist his own personal pet theories onto the whole country with his reckless campaign to undermine vaccines and public trust in them. Read my statement on the news coming out of the CDC 👇

Nobody would put these panels forward as representing the general scientific opinion.

CSPI President @drpeterlurie.bsky.social appeared on CNN yesterday to discuss RFK Jr.'s stunning decision to pull $500 million in funding away from development of mRNA vaccines - a decision that will have far-reaching impacts beyond just vaccines for COVID.

Video source: CNN

The job of Surgeon General of the United States is not an entry-level position.

RFK Jr. Turns to Fringe Medical Journal to Find New Hires George Tidmarsh is a millionaire co-founder of a biotech firm, serial entrepreneur, neonatologist and adjunct professor at Stanford University. But his part in creating a fringe medical journal is the...

RFK, Jr. continues the trend of plucking new hires from unscientific spaces and placing them in positions where they can spread their fringe ideas on a national scale. So-called medical journals like the "Journal of the Academy of Public Health" are the canary in the coal mine here.

“Restoring Gold Standard Science” is a move from the same toolbox as RFK, Jr.’s “radical transparency.” That is to say, it will do the exact opposite of what it says it will do. Excellent piece from @drdavidmichaels.bsky.social and Wendy Wagner.

Just four months into his role as secretary, RFK, Jr. has already cast doubt on established science, fired staff across HHS, slashed funding for research, and pursued fringe health policies while showing no signs of producing and following scientific evidence that would improve the public's health.

The FDA routinely allows substances to remain in foods long after evidence of harm emerges, but the Food Chemical Reassessment Act would ensure the FDA completes those evaluations in a timely manner and begins with chemicals that already have evidence of harm.

Screenshot of the homepage of the USDA's Chemical Contaminants Transparency Tool.

Screenshot of the CDC's "Conflicts of Interest Disclosures of ACIP Members" webpage.

It’s the CRLs for drugs that have never been approved that are of interest to most people. This is the same move they pulled for chem. contaminants and conflicts on CDC’s vaccine advisory committee – putting out material that was already publicly available.

“Radical transparency” this isn’t. (2/2)

Screenshot of the FDA's website on the page "Complete Response Letters." The body text reads "These records include Complete Response Letters (CRL) issued in response to approved new drug applications (NDAs) and biologics license applications (BLAs) between 2020 and 2024. This is the first ever centralized database of past CRLs."

More sleight of hand on “radical transparency” at HHS.

FDA today published complete response letters for 200 drugs, citing my research when I was at FDA. But they are only disclosing the CRLs for drugs that were subsequently approved – and these are already available on the FDA website. (1/2)

Usually these overrides are meant to be less restrictive, making a product available when reviewers are more cautious. It's hard not to think that antipathy towards COVID vaccines is playing a large role in this override.

The MAHA Report is rightly concerned about industry-funded research, but ceding ground to industry won’t help. It’s self-evident that cutbacks in federal funding will leave the field open to the very corporate funding RFK Jr. has decried.

The NIH grant terminations were arbitrary and capricious, and have now been ruled unlawful. Judge Young’s ruling thankfully starts researchers getting back to work delivering progress on cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, HIV, and other health challenges facing our diverse population.

Kennedy Says ‘Charlatans’ Are No Reason to Block Unproven Stem Cell Treatments

RFK: Let's question Pharma drugs, which have actual evidence, and open the market to experimental therapies sometimes made by "charlatans."
 
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/h...

A shocking (or perhaps not so shocking) development for an already questionable report that selectively cherry-picked the literature to support the idiosyncratic biases of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans’ life expectancy.

NEW: Citations in the MAHA Report have telltale signs of AI chatbot use -- we reviewed all 522 of the listed citations, and at least 37 of the footnotes appear multiple times in the citations with another 21 having dead links

w/ @laurenweberhp.bsky.social

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Assessing US Food and Drug Administration Guidance Practices in Drug Development This Viewpoint discusses the US Food and Drug Administration’s history of guidance documents, trends in publishing practices, and suggested reforms for further improvements.

My latest in @jama.com: recent SCOTUS decisions make it clear that the courts will defer to the FDA less often for regulatory interpretation. Laying out clear justification for agency action in guidance documents will likely be critical for its ongoing role in food and drug regulation.

Kennedy and Trump are pushing policies that will make Americans sicker, hungrier, and more at risk from unsafe food. At this moment, that is the true risk to children’s health. (8/8)

And while Americans are consuming too much soda and other ultra-processed junk foods, this administration is actively working to push healthy foods out of reach for millions of people. Who wants to take nutrition advice from someone who’s trying to take food out of your mouth? (7/8)

If he wants to address ultra-processed foods, proposed rules on front-of-package labeling and sodium reduction are in the Federal Register awaiting his signature (both proposals go unmentioned in this report). (6/8)

We appreciate Secretary Kennedy’s interest in things like synthetic food dyes and aspartame – which, to be clear, we’d be better off without – and his concern over ultra-processed foods may be well intended. But... (5/8)

The administration has slashed programs to bring local food into schools, eviscerated government funding for research on nutrition and health, eliminated the office responsible for stopping lead poisoning in children, and are threatening access to life-saving vaccines. (4/8)

USDA repeal of Salmonella framework certain to make Americans sicker

How is the American diet to improve when Republicans are hell-bent on cutting SNAP benefits, slashing school meals, ripping millions of Americans from their health insurance coverage, withdrawing proposed rules that would reduce foodborne Salmonella, and laying off food inspectors? (3/8)