President Donald Trump’s head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Dr. Martin A. “Marty” Makary announced major policy changes on Thursday at the agency and said they will no longer allow pharma members to be part of FDA advisory panels, removing further conflicts of interest.

During the Sirius XM “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast, Kelly pointed out that almost every former FDA commissioner has left the agency and gone into “Big Pharma,” which she said makes it harder to count on them to be honest about a drug’s impact.

The newly-confirmed FDA Commissioner agreed, and said the “scientific evaluation” of drugs needs to be independent. 

“That’s why today we are announcing we're removing industry members, pharma members, from FDA advisory committees,” Makary said. “I was shocked when I learned that employees of big pharma companies sit on FDA advisory committees as members of those committees.”

“So we're going to be replacing them, whenever statutorily possible, with patients and family caregivers,” he added. “We're going to be inviting pharma companies to send representatives to the advisory committees, but they can sit with the rest of the public and watch and pose questions as the rest of the American public can… the idea is that there should not be a cozy relationship.”

MAJOR POLICY CHANGE AT FDA: no more Big Pharma on advisory committees weighing in on drug safety debates. Thank you @DrMakaryFDA! https://t.co/iTLb6OW8N2

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) April 17, 2025

“There should be a user-friendly process for industry, but not a cozy relationship,” Makary continued. “Because, let's be honest, a lot of people in the United States feel that the system is rigged. A lot of people feel that the relationship is too cozy between pharma and regulators, and so this is an agency that belongs to the American people, and so we can work with pharma, and at the same time, ensure that scientific evaluation process is totally independent.”

The FDA head said we can no longer have things like “indications for a chronic pain” drug based on a brief study written by a regulator who then goes and immediately works for the company.

“That's the kind of thing that breeds distrust, and that's why people perceive that this agency, the FDA, has been captured by industry, and it is not captured by industry,” Makary said. “It is owned by the American people right now.”

In March, Makary was confirmed to lead the FDA on a bipartisan 56-44 vote with Senators Dick Durbin (IL), Maggie Hassan (NH), and Jeanne Shaheen (NH) voting with the Americans, as we previously reported.

Like [Director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Jay Bhattacharya] Makary was something of a lightning rod and target for silencing during the COVID epidemic as he heretically opposed lockdowns, masks, and eventually the COVID vaccine while pointing to the dangers of vaccine-induced myocarditis and gain-of-function research; see Opponent of COVID Vaccine Mandates Appointed to Lead the Food and Drug