'She has no expertise': the US medical community girds for Tracy Beth Heg's tenure at the FDA

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/31/tracy-beth-hoeg-fda-vaccines

‘She has no expertise’: the US medical community girds for Tracy Beth Høeg’s tenure at the FDA

The Danish American who doubted Covid shots is meant to lead drug regulation – but has focused on vaccines

Melody Schreiber
Wed 31 Dec 2025 09.00 EST

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“She’s an all-around ideologue who starts off with her conclusions and works backwards to retrofit the evidence in a very disingenuous, dishonest way,” Howard said.

Høeg joined other contrarians, like Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad and Jay Bhattacharya, in sharply criticizing the handling of the Covid pandemic, particularly vaccination; they’ve all been given high-profile positions in the Trump administration.

“They’re totally consolidating power, these Covid contrarians,” Howard said. “Everything that’s happening now is a direct consequence of rage and anger over Covid mitigations. These people are furious – livid that their genius wasn’t acknowledged. So they’re on kind of a revenge tour.”

In the pandemic, the contrarians were like “armchair quarterbacks”, Woodcock said. “The problem with that is, they think they can play the game. They can’t play the game. They’ve never played the game, they just criticized every play.”

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