El-Sayed Details NIH, FDA and CDC Priorities — SkimNews
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- El-Sayed says he would seek an assignment to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, which sets HHS budgets, to “grill” RFK Jr., with a public-health package ready on day one in 2029 for the next Democratic administration.
- RFK Jr. said at a Monday event with Rogers that “500 million Arabs” do not produce science; El-Sayed responded Wednesday by calling him “truly the most incompetent HHS secretary we’ve ever had.”
- Rogers has repeatedly challenged El-Sayed as “not a real doctor”; El-Sayed holds both a D.Phil. and an M.D. but completed no residency and cannot see patients.
- Sanders is pitching El-Sayed as a future Medicare for All standard-bearer; if elected, he would be the Senate’s first epidemiologist and first Muslim senator, and its first medical-degree Democratic senator since 1969.
- Alfredo Morabia, who taught El-Sayed, said the administration contains “almost no public health person,” echoing the candidate’s argument that public health is “really under attack now.”
- El-Sayed says his platform includes capping overhead at universities receiving federal research funding and incentivizing high-risk, high-impact science—priorities that overlap with the Trump administration.
- El-Sayed proposes directing NIH funds toward Americans’ needs, new ideas and training, speeding FDA drug approvals, and making the CDC “more responsive to the future”; his ally says he is offering solutions rather than merely complaining.
Why it matters: For public-health scientists and federal agencies, El-Sayed’s election would give the Senate an epidemiologist. He says he would seek an assignment to the Senate health committee, which sets HHS budgets, with a package ready for 2029: NIH training, faster FDA approvals and a more responsive CDC, while RFK Jr. faces the oversight he wants.
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