The Trump Administration Could Become The Wellness Industry’s Dangerous Ally

Trump's nominees for health and science leadership roles pose a serious threat to science-based public health.

Note: the majority of this piece was written by me and Dr. Katie Suleta and originally published in MedPage Today - I’ve added a few additional excerpts here, specifically related to Dave Wheldon and Marty Makary.

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In fall 2024, Andrea Love, PhD, and Katie Suleta, DHSc, MPH, MS, wrote an op-ed for MedPage Today on how the growth of the wellness industry is a double-edged sword, offering both benefits and risks for public health. Now, with President-elect Donald Trump nominating unconventional leaders for U.S. health agencies, Love and Suleta revisited the topic to discuss their concerns for health and wellness under the incoming administration.

The $5.6 trillion wellness industry sells a seductive premise: pursue personal well-being and empowerment by bypassing the perceived failures of conventional medicine. This narrative fuels a market of unregulated supplements, unproven tests, and vague diagnoses -- all sold under the guise of taking control of your health.

With the incoming Trump administration tapping individuals like Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Mehmet Oz, MD, Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, and others to be in top health and science roles, we fear that the wellness industry could gain unprecedented power to shape public health policy, dismantle regulatory oversight, and institutionalize medical conspiracism.

Among these nominees are people who do more than just dabble in pseudoscience and conspiracies -- they are, arguably, its creators. We believe they are a threat to science-based public health and the very institutions designed to protect people from predatory, profit-driven wellness schemes.

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When Medical Conspiracies Replace Scientific Evidence

Kennedy, a leading anti-vaccine activist, has spent years spreading false claims about vaccine safety. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his vaccine-challenging organization, Children's Health Defense, capitalized on misinformation and brought in $23.5 million in a single year (2022). If Kennedy becomes HHS secretary, vaccination rates could plummet, potentially leading to the resurgence of preventable diseases like measles and polio. In fact, members of his team have already launched an offensive against the polio vaccine.

Beyond vaccines, Kennedy's "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) movement attempts to disguise his long-running war against scientific consensus. Kennedy has stoked fears about genetically modified food and conventional farming, spreading misleading statements and misinformation that undermines technologies critical for improving nutrition, addressing food security, and combating climate change. His rhetoric doesn't just harm public health -- it makes healthy choices, like affordable fruits and vegetables, seem dangerous.

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The Weaponization of Medical Credentials

While Kennedy's non-evidence-based views on scientific topics are well-documented, several of Donald Trump's other nominees pose a subtler but equally dangerous threat. Oz and Bhattacharya use their medical degrees to lend credibility to the misinformation and doubt they arguably sow in science-based medicine and public health.

Oz, of TV's "Dr. Oz Show," built his brand and much of his $100+ million fortune by promoting unsafe supplements, giving a platform to pseudoscience like iridology and homeopathy and touting other unproven health trends. More than 50% of health claims he made on TV were false or lacked evidence. If confirmed as head of CMS, Oz's track record suggests he might prioritize unproven treatments and supplements over evidence-based medicine.

Bhattacharya, the potential head of NIH, co-authored the discredited Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for COVID-19 "herd immunity" through uncontrolled spread -- a policy that could have killed millions more. His rhetoric against lockdowns and vaccines has likely emboldened anti-vaccine activists and wellness influencers. If he leads the NIH, funding could shift from critical scientific research to studies amplifying unproven approaches or policies. Of note, Bhattacharya never completed residency after medical school, he does not practice medicine, and his PhD is in economics (as is his work experience).

Dave Wheldon, Trump’s nominee for the CDC, has faced less public scrutiny than these men, but he also has a long history of anti-vaccine rhetoric. To this day, he continues to claim falsely that vaccines cause autism. A physician in Florida, he also formerly served in Congress and during that time, tried to pass several legislative measures undermining vaccines. He also partnered with the anti-science activist group EWG to propagate their “report” titled “Overloaded” where they claimed vaccines caused autism. If he is allowed to lead CDC, we could see irreparable damage to life-saving infectious disease research and therapeutic interventions.

Marty Makary, the potential head of the FDA, has a history of eroding trust with misinformation. He wrote that medical errors are the third leading cause of death, even while his methods had glaring flaws. He’s accused healthcare providers of ignoring “root causes” of illness and has spread falsehoods that cancer rates have doubled due to “poisons” in our food. By framing health as a solely personal responsibility, he overlooks systemic inequities and real drivers of disease. Under his leadership, the FDA could shift from evidence-based regulation to enabling the wellness industry’s agenda of deregulation and distrust.

For context, here are the pancreatic cancer rate data (read more here):

In 1992, the rate of new pancreatic cancer cases was 11.1 per 100,000 people. In 2021, thirty years later, the rate was 13.2 cases per 100,000 people.

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Deregulation Fuels the Wellness Industry

The wellness industry's exponential growth is thanks, in part, to the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which limited FDA's power to require safety and efficacy testing for supplements. Under DSHEA, supplement manufacturers can sell products with bold, unsupported health claims, as long as they include a disclaimer that they're "not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease," among other limited requirements.

This regulatory black hole allows for:

• Unproven Claims: Products boast vague promises like "boosts immunity" or "detoxes toxins" without evidence.

• Unsafe Products: The FDA can only act after harm occurs, leaving dangerous and mislabeled products on shelves.

• Consumer Exploitation: Passed by Congress as an empowering choice among consumers, DSHEA handed a power and profit motive to the wellness industry and exposed the public to misleading claims and untested products.

Trump's continued push for deregulation during his second term could drive wellness industry profits at the expense of public health, with potentially dangerous consequences. With reduced oversight over the wellness industry, safety testing for products could become more lax; more contaminated supplements and unsafe products could flood the market unchecked; or science-backed vaccines could become vilified.

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Wellness Profiteering in Policymaking

The wellness industry's intersection with politics is deliberate: it uses the same tactics to appeal to those skeptical of the government. We view medical conspiracism -- that the government and their affiliates like "Big Pharma" and "Big Food" are suppressing health interventions to harm us -- as a central tenet of the wellness industry. The wellness industry often positions its products as altruistic, "natural" alternatives, arguing that regulation is a barrier to true health.

Anti-science rhetoric reinforces this message, portraying conventional medicine and public health measures as corrupt and untrustworthy. We believe figures in the Trump sphere, like Oz, Kennedy, and advisor Calley Means (a wellness industry entrepreneur and lobbyist), repeat and amplify this narrative. The Trump administration's focus on deregulation and anti-establishment rhetoric makes it an ideal ecosystem for wellness pseudoscience to become mainstream.

This isn't just a threat to federal safeguards, it's a direct assault on science-based medicine. Trump's nominees could institutionalize wellness culture and medical conspiracism, eroding public trust in health agencies, dismantling vaccination programs, and reversing decades of progress in food and drug safety. This isn't just bad policy, it's a green light for pseudoscience to dictate public health, divert research funding, and strip away federal oversight. The result could be the undoing of decades of public health progress, putting all of us in harm's way.

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Healthcare in America needs reform -- but handing the wheel to wellness profiteers isn't the answer.

Real reform means strengthening public health systems, addressing systemic inequities, and holding industries accountable to rigorous scientific standards.

If policymakers and consumers don't push back against the lucrative influence of the wellness industry, we risk trading a flawed system for an even more dangerous one -- one that prioritizes profit over safety, conspiracy over evidence, and pseudoscience over public health.

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We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

More science education, less disinformation.

- Andrea

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Katie Suleta, DHSc, MPH, MS, is a trained epidemiologist with a background in infectious diseases and health informatics. She works as a regional director of research in graduate medical education and is a science writer.

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below: