EYDER PERALTA, HOST:
The Food and Drug Administration - the agency that regulates a lot of the things Americans eat and the medicines we take - is now part of a huge reorganization. The Trump administration announced Thursday that it will cut 20,000 jobs from the Department of Health and Human Services. Thirty-five hundred of those are from the FDA. NPR consumer health correspondent Yuki Noguchi joins us now to talk about this. Good morning, Yuki.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Good morning.
PERALTA: Do you have any specifics about these jobs?
NOGUCHI: Well, they've given some general indications that they want to trim in HR in IT, for example, but the FDA didn't respond to my inquiries, and so we really don't know the specifics. But Peter Marks, who spearheaded the development of the COVID-19 vaccine at the FDA, said he was pushed out last week. And Robert Califf, who's actually a two-time FDA commissioner - most recently under Biden - sounded alarms at a press conference with Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray, noting that these cuts are on top of other big departures.
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ROBERT CALIFF: A cut of an additional 3,500 people on top of the arbitrary cuts that have already occurred in addition to all the people who are leaving is likely to leave the FDA unable to do its critical work.
NOGUCHI: And, Eyder, the critical work he refers to is, you know, safety reviews for things like new drugs, food safety, tobacco, vaccines, and devices like, you know, heart pacemakers. You know, a lot of everyday consumer items are regulated by the FDA.
PERALTA: Yuki, what is the White House saying about how these cuts and this realignment fits with its priorities?
NOGUCHI: Yeah, it's led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new Health and Human Services secretary, and he says the country's health agencies are too bloated and ineffective at fighting, in particular, chronic disease. He and others dislike the country's past approach to public health generally, and Peter Marks wrote a bitter resignation letter suggesting Kennedy's cutting back on vaccine efforts because that work doesn't align with Kennedy's personal beliefs. On the other hand, Kennedy has led this campaign to make America healthy again, and that phrase has now got its own acronym, MAHA, and has a broad following. But Califf says these cuts are not consistent with that idea.
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CALIFF: And it's really striking to me how the rhetoric of, for example, better nutrition, enhanced food safety, innovation and medical products runs contrary to what's being done with the workforce.
NOGUCHI: You know, he even quipped that this seems like a good way to make America not healthy again.
PERALTA: One of the stated goals of these restructurings is cost cutting. Any idea how much money these reductions at the FDA saves?
NOGUCHI: You know, interestingly, many jobs at the FDA are actually not paid for by taxpayers. Companies and industry pay to have their medicines or new devices tested by that agency and then pay fees for that. So overall, half of the FDA's budget is funded by the businesses that need their safety evaluations. Not all divisions are like that, but, for example, the part of the FDA that reviews tobacco is entirely funded by those fees. You know, without knowing more details about the positions eliminated, it's hard to say. But if that work, you know, the outside work slows, presumably the agency's own outside revenue source would as well.
PERALTA: That's NPR's consumer health correspondent, Yuki Noguchi. Yuki, thank you.
NOGUCHI: Thank you, Eyder. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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