# Marty Makary

Martin Adel Makary (/məˈkæri/) is a British-American surgeon, professor, author, and medical commentator. He practices surgical oncology and gastrointestinal laparoscopic surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, is Mark Ravitch Chair in Gastrointestinal Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and is the chief of Islet Transplant Surgery at Johns Hopkins. Makary is an advocate for disruptive innovation in medicine and physician-led initiatives, such as a surgical checklist that he developed at Johns Hopkins.
In 2018, Makary was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. In November 2024, President-Elect Donald Trump announced Makary would be his nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as its commissioner.
While supporting universal masking early in the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines for adults, he opposed broad vaccine mandates and certain school and university restrictions.

## Early life and education

Makary was born in Liverpool, England, and moved to Baltimore as a young child. His Egyptian family later moved to Danville, Pennsylvania, when his father took a job as a hematologist at the Geisinger Medical Center. Makary holds degrees from Bucknell University, Thomas Jefferson University and Harvard University. He was president of the student body at Harvard and later served on the alumni board. He completed a Masters of Public Health (M.P.H.) degree, with a concentration in health policy.

## Professional career

Makary completed a surgical residency at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. where he also worked as a writer for The Advisory Board Company. Makary completed sub-specialty surgery training at Johns Hopkins in surgical oncology and gastrointestinal surgery under surgeon John Cameron, before joining Cameron's faculty practice as a partner. In his first few years on the faculty at Johns Hopkins, Makary researched and wrote articles on the prevention of surgical complications. He published on frailty as a medical condition, and on safety and teamwork culture in medicine. Makary is the first author of the original scientific publications describing "The Surgery Checklist". Makary worked with the World Health Organization to develop the official World Health Organization Surgical Checklist.
Makary was named Mark Ravitch Chair in Gastrointestinal Surgery, an endowed chair at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, becoming the youngest endowed chair recipient at the time at the university. Three years later, he was named the Credentials Chair and Director of Quality and Safety for Surgery at Johns Hopkins. In 2020, Makary was named Editor-in-Chief of MedPage Today. He was also appointed chief of the Johns Hopkins Islet Transplant Center, clinical lead for the Johns Hopkins Sibley Innovation Hub, Executive Director of Improving Wisely, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project to lower health care costs, and is founder of the Johns Hopkins Center For Surgical Outcomes Research and Clinical Trials.
Makary is a pancreatic surgeon and has pioneered novel surgical procedures. He was awarded the Nobility in Science Award by the National Pancreas Foundation for performing the world's first series of laparoscopic pancreas islet transplant operations. He has traveled with his international team overseas. Makary specializes in advanced laparoscopic surgery and performed the first laparoscopic Whipple surgery at Johns Hopkins and the first laparoscopic Frey's procedure for pancreatitis.
Makary's research led to several partnerships, including a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, to study obesity treatment, and a grant from the same agency to implement safety programs at 100 U.S. hospitals, a project he collaborated on with Peter Pronovost and the American College of Surgeons. Makary was also the lead author in the original paper introducing a Hospital Survey of Patient Safety Culture.
Makary has called for the public reporting physician-endorsed quality measures by hospitals. He and Bryan Sexton have encouraged hundreds of hospitals to take the "Culture of Safety Survey" and make their results available to their communities. Makary also advocates for price transparency and has led efforts to ask hospitals to stop suing their low-income patients.
In 2016, Makary and his colleagues exposed loopholes in the Orphan Drug Act accounting for higher drug pricing. His article "The Orphan Drug Act: Restoring the Mission to Rare Diseases", covered by Kaiser Heath News, led Senator Chuck Grassley's office to announce an investigation.
Makary, along with Michael Daniel, authored a piece in the British Medical Journal that claimed that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Multiple critics pointed out the article's poor methodology of how said number is calculated, suggesting the number they presented, just under half a million death per year, is likely an overestimate. Critics have claimed that such numbers give the public the wrong impression regarding the safety and quality of medical care, allowing groups like alternative medicine to further push people from seeking appropriate care.

### COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Makary has been a proponent of treating the pandemic as a public health threat, masking, vaccines and early vaccination strategies that prioritized maximum coverage against severe disease similar to the UK vaccination strategy, and protection provided by natural immunity. Makary has also been an outspoken opponent of vaccine mandates, various FDA and CDC policies, and restrictions at colleges and universities.
In February 2020, Makary said on television that the United States needed to take the threat of COVID-19 seriously and that people should stop all non-essential travel. In addition Makary called for a national lockdown to help slow the spread of the virus and enable the healthcare system to respond and reduce morbidity and mortality. In May 2020, Makary advocated for universal masking in an effort to enable businesses and schools to re-open to minimize economic and educational damage across the United States.
In November 2020, Makary was critical of the pace at which the FDA was approving the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer. Makary had taken issue with the speed at which various US government health organizations had taken to evaluate medications or perform COVID-19-based research. In early February 2021, Makary advocated for prioritizing getting as many vaccinated with single doses versus holding vaccines back for second doses.
In a February 2021 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Makary predicted that "At the current trajectory", COVID-19 in the United States would "be mostly gone by April" 2021, primarily as a result of naturally acquired immunity, which would result in herd immunity. The article's estimates of herd immunity were criticized for being higher than the best available data supported. Later that year, the Delta and Omicron variants of COVID-19 caused hundreds of thousands of additional deaths in the United States.
Makary considers himself pro-vaccine but has also criticized vaccination mandates for populations other than healthcare workers. Makary recommended a single-dose mRNA vaccine regimen for children 12-17 to minimize the occurrence of myocarditis as a reaction, contrary to the CDC's finding that the risks of infection "far outweigh" those of the two-dose vaccine schedule. In December 2021, he appeared on a podcast to argue against vaccine boosters, referring to himself as an "unboosted male" and saying that the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant was "nature's vaccine".

## Nomination Process as Commissioner of FDA

On March 6, 2025, Makary met before the U.S. Senate Committee on Heath, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). His nomination was advanced by the committee to a U.S. Senate vote with a vote of 14 to 9.

## Writings

Makary is the author of the New York Times Best Selling book Unaccountable, in which he proposes that common sense, physician-led solutions can fix the healthcare system. The book was turned into the popular TV series, The Resident, which aired on Fox in 2018. Makary is also the author of Mama Maggie a personal story about his distant relative Magda Gobran, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee working in the garbage slums of Cairo.
Makary's 2018 book The Price We Pay describes how business leaders can lower their healthcare costs and explores the grass-roots movement to restore medicine to its noble mission. Makary is also the editor of the surgery textbook General Surgery Review.
In his 2024 book Blind Spots, Makary urges readers to think critically about today's medical consensuses. In this book, he examined cases where medicine got science wrong, such as the insistence that opioids are not addictive or urging consumers to avoid foods high in fat.

## Political views

Makary donated to Barack Obama's Presidential Campaign in 2008. He also gave money to Republican House Member Frank Wolf in the mid-2000s.
He has been a public adviser to Paragon Health Institute, a conservative health care think tank.

## Awards and recognition

Makary is the recipient of numerous research and teaching awards, including the Best Teacher Award for Georgetown Medical School and research awards from the Washington Academy of Surgery and the New England Surgical Society. He has been a visiting professor at over 30 U.S. medical schools and lectures frequently on innovation in health care. Makary was named one of the most influential people in healthcare by HealthLeader magazine in 2013. In 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.