Public Health Voices: Essay by Irwin Redlener
Along with almost every medical and public health professional in America, I have been appalled by the men and women, starting with health chief Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump has selected to be in charge of national health policy.
The latest disaster was Trump’s nominee to be Surgeon General, Casey Means. Means was another irredeemably unqualified candidate who, thank goodness, has been pulled from consideration by the president himself.
Instead, Trump has just nominated Dr. Nicole Saphier, a practicing radiologist with legitimate credentials to be considered for the job as “America’s doctor”.
Nicole Saphier is not perfect. She has taken positions that diverge from mainstream public health consensus, particularly around COVID-era policies and mandates. But she is a board-certified physician with real clinical experience, grounded in the practice of medicine, and importantly, she does not traffic in anti-vaccine conspiracies or pseudo-science. She has acknowledged the value of established vaccines and operates within the boundaries of evidence-based medicine, even if she challenges aspects of it.
At a moment when credibility is in short supply, Saphier represents something closer to a traditional, medically trained voice. She may not satisfy everyone—and she doesn’t satisfy me completely—but she is serious, qualified, and far more aligned with science than the alternatives.
That’s enough to say she deserves a fair, open-minded hearing.
