STAT+: Truth-teller or reflexive contrarian: Which Marty Makary would run the FDA?

WASHINGTON — Marty Makary knows how to captivate an audience. 

President-elect Trump’s nominee for Food and Drug Administration commissioner has spent his medical career crusading against injustice in the health care system, attracting constant media and political attention along the way. 

Recently, he’s used his skills to help vault chronic disease into a hot-button political issue and to amplify distrust of the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. But Makary, a pancreatic surgeon, got his start raising awareness about an important and hard-to-grasp issue: the impact of hospital workplace culture on patient care. Building out surgical checklists, improving employee transparency — at first blush, these are dull concepts. Makary figured out a way to make people care, to make those practices feel urgent. 

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