But Jim Potter, executive director of the bipartisan Health Communications Coalition, said the administration would likely face legal challenges if it proposed additional restrictions or outright bans on drug advertising. “Courts view advertising as a form of commercial speech and have ruled in a series of cases dating back to the 1970s that advertising bans violate First Amendment protections of free speech,” he said. says. “If the administration were to try to impose new rules unilaterally, the legal basis today would be more unstable than in years past.”
That’s because the U.S. Supreme Court last summer overturned the long-standing Chevron doctrine, which gives federal agencies some discretion in interpreting ambiguous laws. The Supreme Court’s decision transfers authority from agencies such as the FDA to the courts.
Ballreich and Wiseman say President Kennedy has endorsed unsubstantiated treatments for COVID-19, including raw milk, vitamins, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, and that the government is approving medicines lacking scientific evidence. I am concerned that this may lead to
“When Robert Kennedy talks about fighting corruption and Big Pharma’s monopoly, he is talking about lowering FDA standards and allowing the approval and promotion of ineffective and questionable treatments, drugs, herbs, etc. “I think it will,” Wiseman said.
As secretary of health, Kennedy will not be directly responsible for approving new drugs or treatments. That job falls to the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which often approves drugs based on the recommendations of independent advisory committees. But in a handful of controversial cases, including when it greenlit Exondys 51 to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy in 2016, the agency has approved drugs against this expert advice. FDA advisers said there was not enough evidence to show the drug worked. Real clinical benefits.
RFK has also called for more scrutiny of vaccines, which already need to be tested on thousands of healthy volunteers for several years before they can be approved. This skepticism may be reflected in fewer vaccines on the market and increased post-market surveillance of approved vaccines.
President Kennedy worked with Mehmet Oz, whom President Trump nominated to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to remove questionable treatments and medical devices from Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people over 65 and people with disabilities. There is a possibility that they will be promoted to be targeted.
But President Kennedy’s anti-pharmaceutical stance could be tempered by Republicans in Congress, which have historically been reluctant to tighten regulations, and other members of Congress appointed by President Trump. The president-elect chose Marty McCurry, a pancreatic surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, to head the FDA in a more traditional selection. Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswami, founder of pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences, has been selected to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a presidential advisory committee planned under the second Trump administration. .
“There are big question marks over the Trump administration and its approach to medicine in general,” Barreich said. “It’s hard to know how this situation will actually play out.”
