Dr. Marty Makary will testify before the Senate health committee on Thursday. Lawmakers may press him over staff reductions and changes in agency direction on issues like vaccines.
Dr. Marty Makary may face sharp questions from senators about whether he will defend the Food and Drug Administration against staff cutbacks and industry pressure on Thursday, although he is still expected to sail through his confirmation hearing to become the agency’s commissioner.
Dr. Makary built his reputation as a contrarian in the medical field, gaining widespread notice by speaking out about medical errors. Those close to him have remarked on his willingness to agree with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, on a variety of issues.
As a pancreatic cancer surgeon and health policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Makary has been viewed by some as a study in contrasts. He has written several books criticizing what he considers flaws in medical orthodoxy that result in recommendations backed by scant evidence.
Yet he also drew attention from the Trump team as a Fox News personality with more controversial views, like his relatively early predictions that Covid would fade as a concern and that widespread immunity would take hold long before it did.
Dr. Reshma Ramachandran, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine, said that it was not clear which is the “true Marty Makary.”
She said that was an important question, given some of Mr. Kennedy’s pronouncements. The health secretary has suggested that the F.D.A. should lift constraints on risky products like raw milk, which can be rife with bacteria, and had embraced hydroxychloroquine, a drug briefly used as a Covid therapy before its risks were deemed to exceed any benefit.