May 8 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump has signed off on a plan to fire U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The White House and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, were not immediately available for comment.
Over the past week, reports of Makary’s potential exit have intensified over concerns tied to controversial decisions on drug approvals, vaccines and the FDA’s handling of mifepristone or the so-called abortion pill.
A source close to the White House said they were told the FDA commissioner “is done” and that Trump signed off.
The exit would mark the latest departure among U.S. health agencies, where leading officials have left the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and others. The FDA has acting heads in charge of its top drug development departments.
Makary, a surgical oncologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, was confirmed as FDA commissioner last March. He wrote bestselling books on healthcare costs and what he described as modern medicine’s failures, and has been one of the key advocates of the Make America Healthy Again movement backed by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the plan is not yet final and could change.
(Reporting by Padmanabhan Ananthan, Ahmed Aboulenein and Jarrett Renshaw; editing by Caroline Humer and Deepa Babington)
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