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President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Friday that he would nominate Dr. Martin A. Makary, a Johns Hopkins University surgeon with a contrarian streak, to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Makary, 54, rose to prominence more than a decade ago as a critic of the medical establishment, speaking out about patient safety and working with hospitals to improve practices. He also gained attention during the pandemic, weighing in on herd immunity, vaccines and masks in 2021, roiling some doctors who were still contending with packed I.C.U.s and hundreds of deaths a week. (Jewett, 11/22)

Makary emerged during the Covid pandemic as a critic of the FDA — first on how long it took the agency to review data leading up to its approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and then for not considering changes to recommendations for children in light of the risk of a rare heart condition in young males that’s been linked to the shot. His suggestion that the agency slow-walked the first Covid vaccines to undermine then-President Trump prompted fierce pushback from agency leaders. Four years later, Makary, a Johns Hopkins gastrointestinal surgeon who advised the first Trump White House, stands to be recognized for his vociferous support of the president-elect’s pandemic response. (Gardner and Lim, 11/22)

After the pandemic, Marty Makary began turning back to his initial focus railing against an overpriced health care system. He's long argued that the system is broken, overcharging patients and running unnecessary tests. He also began speaking more critically about America's food system, echoing a message embraced by Trump's pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "We've got a poisoned food supply. We've got pesticides. We've got ultra-processed foods and all sorts of things that have been in the blind spots in modern medicine," Makary told Fox News this September. (Flaherty and McDuffie, 11/22)

Martin Makary is an executive of the telehealth company Sesame, which connects consumers to physicians who can prescribe compounded weight-loss drugs. If confirmed as FDA commissioner, Makary would take the lead of the agency as it grapples with high-stakes policy issues that could impact Sesame’s business. The FDA — and patients — have been caught in the middle of a fight between the makers of branded drugs used to treat obesity and pharmacies that have been compounding cheaper versions of those drugs for more than two years. (Wilkerson, Zhang and Palmer, 11/24)

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Marty Makary, MD, MPH, to run the FDA. Makary served as the editor-in-chief of MedPage Today from January 2020 through the end of 2021. Makary has written three books on medicine and healthcare: Blind Spots, The Price We Pay, and Unaccountable, the last of which was turned into a TV series called "The Resident." A theme of all three books is challenging the status quo in medicine, questioning the evidence base for certain treatments and established clinical practices. Among his top issues, Makary has taken on the high costs of healthcare and medicine's penchant for overtreatment. He also authored Mama Maggie, a book about a woman who aids the poor people of Egypt's slums. (Fiore, 11/22)

Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary has criticized – sometimes with harsh language –  the Food and Drug Administration that President-elect Trump has tapped him to lead. (Zhang, 11/24)

STAT reporters reached out to key figures in biotech, pharma, and medical devices to find out what they think about President-elect Trump’s pick of Johns Hopkins pancreatic surgeon Martin “Marty” Makary as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. (DeAngelis, Feuerstein, Herper, Lawrence, St. Fleur and Wosen, 11/23)