Make America Healthy Again

Last Friday, President-elect Donald Trump announced his pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates 20 cents of every dollar spent by US consumers and approves over 50 new drugs per year. A surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Marty Makary will have a key role to play in Trump's recently adopted "Make America Healthy Again" plan. His most recent book, Blind Spots, a page-turner describing how group-think has led to detrimental public health recommendations in the US, sheds light on what his tenure might focus on: challenging the medical establishment. The rise in colon cancer rates in young people is one of the topics covered in his book. While this trend is often linked to the growing consumption of ultra-processed foods, Makary highlights another potential factor: the detrimental effects of antibiotics on the gut microbiome. An hypothesis supported by a 2017 Harvard study of over 16,000 nurses, which found that antibiotics might be associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer.

Source: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, DOI 10.1093/jnci/djw322, August 2017.