The Defender’s Big Pharma Watch delivers the latest headlines related to pharmaceutical companies and their products, including vaccines, drugs, and medical devices and treatments.

The views expressed in the below excerpts from other news sources do not necessarily reflect the views of The Defender.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Foe of Drug Makers and Regulators, Is Poised to Wield New Power

New York Times reported:

When 12,000 public health professionals gathered in Minneapolis last week for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general in the first administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, issued a pointed warning about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“If R.F.K. has a significant influence on the next administration, that could further erode people’s willingness to get up to date with recommended vaccines,” Dr. Adams said. “I am worried about the impact that could have on our nation’s health, on our nation’s economy, on our global security.”

Now, Mr. Kennedy, a vocal skeptic of vaccines, is in a position to have significant influence, and over a broad range of policy. Mr. Trump’s sweeping electoral victory, with Mr. Kennedy at his side, is — in the eyes of their supporters — not only a mandate but also a repudiation of the public health establishment that has long kept Mr. Kennedy at bay.

Mr. Kennedy’s worldview is embodied in two of his most frequent refrains:

“There is nothing more profitable for much of the health care system than a sick child” and

“Public health agencies have become sock puppets for the industries they are supposed to regulate.”

Now that Republicans will control the Senate, Mr. Kennedy could theoretically win confirmation for any one of a number of top health jobs: secretary of Health and Human Services, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“There is a real mandate victory here, with many millions of people who are first-time Trump voters,” said Calley Means, a health care entrepreneur who has been an adviser to Mr. Kennedy and who was instrumental in connecting him to Mr. Trump. “It is a true mandate to take on broken health care institutions, and to deliver the change.”

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Ghost of Pandemic Haunts US Election with Win for Anti-Vax Movement

The Guardian reported:

Donald Trump will be propelled to the White House for a second term amid concerns about inflation kicked off by the pandemic, with a leading vaccine skeptic — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — at his side, and proposals from conservative supporters to fundamentally restructure public health agencies central to pandemic-era ire.

COVID-19 was never seen as the central issue of the 2024 presidential campaign season, but in the first post-pandemic presidential election, it reverberated as the anti-vaccine movement ascended to its greatest political heights ever. Even in his Wednesday morning acceptance speech, Trump alluded to changes he expects as his administration comes into focus.

The vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr. is “going to help make America healthy again,” Trump told supporters, before adding: “We’re going to let him go to it.” Dr Howard Markel, a historian of medicine at the University of Michigan who has studied pandemics, said he was struck by widespread anger, and called the election’s theme “the ghost of pandemic future.”

“Did you ever think,” Markel said he remarked to colleagues, “when you were doing all this hard work and staying up all night that not like 1% or 10%, but like 50% of the country would be saying you destroyed their life and kept them inside, out of harm’s way, during the pandemic?”

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