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By Rachael Levy
(Reuters) -Tracy Beth Hoeg, a sports medicine physician and epidemiologist who opposed key U.S. health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic and questioned the use of some childhood vaccines, was named a special assistant to new FDA chief Martin Makary, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Hoeg’s position was announced on Wednesday during President Donald Trump appointee Makary’s first speech to staff at Food and Drug Administration headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, the two FDA sources said.
Both Hoeg and Makary espoused contrarian views on U.S. COVID policies, including opposition to mask requirements for children and universal vaccine mandates for the public, while supporting vaccination in general as a key public health measure.
“The official public health response to COVID has undermined the public’s belief in public health itself,” Makary and Hoeg wrote in a 2022 joint article for The Free Press. “We run the risk of parents rejecting routine vaccines for their children - ones we know are safe, effective and life-saving.”
Reuters could not immediately determine Hoeg’s remit in her new role. When Reuters reached Hoeg by cell phone, the connection cut out after a reporter introduced herself. A spokesman at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees FDA, declined to comment.
Hoeg’s appointment comes as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine critic, makes changes to the oversight of immunizations, alarming public health experts who say his actions will further erode Americans’ trust in life-saving shots.
Hoeg previously worked as an epidemiologist for Florida surgeon general Joseph Ladapo, who has repeatedly cast doubt on the safety of COVID vaccines. She has questioned why the U.S. pediatric vaccine schedule includes several more shots than in Denmark, including immunizations against flu, rotavirus and varicella, for children not known to be at high-risk for severe illness.
In an episode of a podcast titled “Vaccine Curious” shortly after Trump was reelected in November, Hoeg and a colleague discussed “our wishes” for U.S. vaccine policy in the coming four years, according to a post shared by Hoeg on her X account.
It included support for a “revised framework for testing, approving and regulating new vaccines”; careful reviews of all safety signals regarding vaccines; ending use of “unnecessary” vaccines; an end to vaccine mandates and an open discussion of the “pros and cons” of vaccines.
Health officials in Texas and nearby states are battling a growing measles outbreak fueled by vaccine hesitancy.
In a 2022 essay on the Tablet website, Hoeg said that vaccinations against measles “are more important to children’s health” than COVID shots and “vaccinations are one of the most lifesaving medical interventions in human history.”
Hoeg has worked as a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at the University of California, Davis and in an orthopedic office in California, according to her LinkedIn profile.
(Reporting by Rachael Levy in Washington; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Bill Berkrot)
