• by Les Luchter , November 20, 2024

Dave Denton, Pfizer CFO (left), and Andrew Baum, chief strategy officer, react to Dr. Oz question at the Jefferies London Healthcare Conference

Dr. Mehmet Oz as a key health care nominee in the new Trump administration? Dave Denton, Pfizer’s chief financial officer, seemed to chuckle at the name, mentioned during the first question asked Wednesday morning at the Jefferies London Healthcare Conference.

Then, Denton got serious.

Noting that Pfizer had a “very good relationship” with the first Trump administration and also has one with Trump’s current transition team, Denton said he sees both positive and negative changes coming.

He applauded the possibility of loosened roadblocks leading to getting “drugs to market more quickly,” but on the other side admitted that “not everybody is a complete believer in vaccines.” He did add, “If you look at the actual comments from the incoming administration, they’ve not been as destructive as they might have been months ago. The rhetoric’s a bit more tampered.”

With Pfizer’s COVID-19 products settling into a $10 billion annual business from a pandemic high of $50 billion, Denton pointed out that the COVID vaccine is largely being taken by people “over 65 and at high risk. And I think the appetite for continuing vaccines…in that realm of patient population is still very high and supported from a government perspective.”

Others weren’t as kind in their reactions to Dr. Oz being named to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under RFK Jr’s Health and Human Services agency,

“It’s as if Donald Trump is poised to turn over control of our vital health and medical agencies to a clown car full of unqualified quacks,” Dr. Peter G. Lurie, president of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a statement.

In particular, “Dr. Oz is famous for promoting medicines and supplements that do not do what Oz says they do,” decried Dr. Lurie, accusing Dr. Oz of joining RFK Jr. in touting the “debunked” hydroxychloroquine “treatment” for COVID-19. “He has devoted a large portion of his career to promoting silly therapies involving herbs and extracts with no discernable health effects, various other purported weight-loss remedies, and has even promoted homeopathy…”

On the other hand, Scott Whitaker, president and chief executive officer of the med tech trade group AdvaMed, applauded Dr. Oz’s “firsthand experience with medical technology” and his resulting understanding of “the incredible impact these technologies can have in the lives of patients in need. As a practitioner, he has also seen firsthand the negative impact a lack of access to these technologies can have on these same patients.