HHS is an Unsafe Work Environment
The Boys' Club from Hell
When you agree to work for an Administration helmed by a such a vile excuse for a man, whose history of vile racist & misogynistic deeds - including rape & pedophilia - looms beyond measure, it speaks volumes about the moral depravity of one’s own character. Your soul becomes stained irrevocably. No matter your imagined grievances about the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there can be no justification to rally behind someone who has utterly nothing to offer the world but death & suffering. “That way, madness lies,” as The Bard of Avon warns us.
The Department of Health and Human Services, an umbrella for multiple essential agencies such as the Food & Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, has chosen to unify under a banner of misogyny. Across the board, the leadership of our federal public health agencies has embraced an anti-culture that has created a hostile work environment for the doctors and scientists tasked with protecting the American people. While a war on vaccines & other ridiculous antics have dominated the headlines, a dark shadow now looms over the Department of Health and Human Services.
The rot starts at the very top: As I have said before and will repeat until I am blue in the face: the Secretary of Health and Human Services is a scam artist who drove his wife to suicide after she uncovered a “little black book” rating his affairs by the explicitness of the sex acts performed. University administrators did nothing and cowardly stayed silent as members of their faculty publicly endorsed this exploitative crank, many of which left to go enlist in his war against the public’s health.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that this malignant infection would spread across our most essential federal agencies in rapid fashion.
Section I. Food & Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary had already established himself to be an obnoxious, misogynistic fraud long before joining the Trump Administration. He would frequently attack the existence of Post-Acute COVID Syndome, or “Long COVID,” a disabling chronic illness which disproportionately affects women. Going on FOX News in 2023, he proclaimed “There is no Long COVID, there is only long anxiety,” in a revival of the long disproven and deeply misogynistic “hysteria” trope dating back centuries. Johns Hopkins did not consider this an offense worth termination of his employment.
At the Food & Drug Administration, Commissioner Marty Makary has championed menopause hormone therapy (MHT) through a series of stacked and biased “panels” which feature a number of unscientific quacks. (I am largely paraphrasing Dr. Jen Gunter of The Vajenda, who has done excellent reporting on the matter.) Makary has claimed that MHT is just as good as antibiotics, suggesting every woman should be taking MHT, which he insists on misrepresenting as “hormone replacement therapy.”
Championing MHT, Makary has pathetically and completely unscientifically claimed that this will help protect women from cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s. Marty has also blamed menopause for divorce and claimed that MHT cures depression. After getting everything wrong on COVID-19, Makary has made it blatantly obvious to everyone with sense that he knows utterly nothing about women’s health. Marty is simply exploiting a very serious set of issues to manufacture a spectacle in which he and his fellow ignorant misogynists are the real heroes of women’s health.
Marty Makary would also be instrumental in bringing UCSF’s Vinay Prasad, who made himself an outcast in medicine for social media clout, to the FDA to become the nation’s top vaccine regulator. This was a disastrously pathetic and utterly predictable mistake. However, both shared in mocking those infected and disabled by SARS-CoV-2, and this took precedent over relevant knowledge or experience.
Section IA. FDA CBER Director Vinay Prasad
In the process of destroying his professional reputation amongst his colleagues in medicine, Vinay Prasad’s social media antics frequently involved vicious attacks on women in journalism, science, and medicine. He incited abuse and harassment by his anti-vaccine followers against those who tried to prevent COVID-19’s harms. The administration of UCSF chose to turn a blind eye to these antics, even after it was brought to their attention on multiple occasions.
It was obvious that if given power, Vinay Prasad would exploit it as an opportunity to abuse, as he himself openly fantasized about firing thousands upon thousands of federal employees prior to joining Makary’s FDA. Now in power, Prasad has consistently appeared in the headlines for his unprofessional antics and inappropriate misconduct, including sexual harassment. It should surprise no one that the same misogyny Prasad brought to social media would be expanded upon in the Food & Drug Administration.
The only difference is, the American taxpayer is now footing the bill - including over $65,000 a year in travel expenses so Prasad may work remotely from San Francisco, something he considers to be a fireable offense. When he’s not acting a fool at the FDA, Prasad has become another common slimeball preying on women - first on dating apps, and now at the Food & Drug Administration.
As Dr. Angela Rasmussen has reported, Prasad has been concealing his marriage status to dates and lying about his age: great foundations for the start of any healthy relationship. The same general disregard and disrespect he has shown for women in medicine also applies to his personal life. It should now come to no surprise that recent reporting shows him engaging in sexual harassment of FDA employees, amongst other abuses. This is an established pattern of misconduct.
Section IB. FDA CDER Director Tracy Beth Hoeg
A completely unqualified sports physician, Tracy Beth Hoeg has a long history of misrepresenting herself as an expert on masks, vaccines, and all things related to COVID-19 in order to profit on social media, frequently writing fraudulent “scientific papers” alongside Vinay Prasad - published in open access journals not subject to peer review, in order to farm outrage and build her following.
As reported by Lizzy Lawrence in STAT News, Tracy announced to the FDA her plans to go after RSV shots and SSRIs in pregnancy; further fearmongering about medical interventions she clearly knows nothing about that will result in dead babies and traumatized mothers if successful. As part of her speech, she included a quote from Ayn Rand. What many aren’t familiar with is that Ayn Rand’s first love was William Richard Hickman, a serial killer who enjoyed murdering and dismembering little girls. Tracy’s hero found this quite intoxicating:
“Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should…no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman.”
This is the guiding philosophy Tracy Beth Hoeg is bringing to the Food & Drug Administration as part of the war against the health of American women and children.
Section II. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Director Mehmet Oz
Another longtime scam artist and grifter, abusing his slot on daytime television to peddle all sorts of wellness grifts, Mehmet Oz fit right in with RFK Jr.’s gang of goons. Seeking to privatize Medicare for his own personal profit, Oz has made a number of horrendous and indefensible statements upon joining the Trump Administration. He clearly sees his fellow American citizen as mere cattle to be bled dry by his rich buddies and fellow scam artists.
So, it should come as no surprise, just hours after Biden’s former COVID Czar and Brown University Dean of Public Health Ashish Jha endorsed Oz’s performance as CMS Director, that it would be revealed Mehmet Oz considered a convicted pedophile a dear friend. In 2016, Oz even went so far to invite this convicted pedophile to his Valentine’s Day party. Are we really supposed to believe that someone who hosts pedophiles at his Valentine’s Day parties is capable of “good leadership,” according to the Brown University Dean of Public Health?
Section III. National Institutes of Health Director & Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya
Prior to joining the Trump administration, Stanford University’s Jay Bhattacharya also engaged in childish antics on social media, including petty insults and absurdly unscientific proclamations. As covered before, Podcast Jay refused to acknowledge when female doctors who actually treated COVID-19 patients pointed out his frequent errors, outright denying their hands-on experiences. This unprofessional disrespect should have seen him terminated from Stanford, instead of rewarded with a pathetic excuse for a “pandemic policy” conference.
Completely unqualified and inexperienced for the role of NIH Director, Jay Bhattacharya’s tenure has been utterly disastrous. Willfully neglecting his duties to go around podcasting on the taxpayer’s dime, the stain of misogyny has infected what was once the world’s leading hub for medical research. Now, you can’t even get a research grant funded if it dares to mention “women” or “female,” that elusive minority which makes up only half of the population. Pledging to remake the NIH into the “research arm of MAHA,” it’s clear that women’s health is not a priority to the chronic podcaster.
This “choice” is essentially condemning countless American women to death by compromising their medical care, something Jay gleefully considers a “MAHA Win” by “curing DEI.” The depravity doesn’t stop there, however. Jay Bhattacharya has now gleefully embraced the brand of a sadistic rapist.
During the 2026 Super Bowl, the Department of Health & Human Services burned millions of taxpayer dollars to unveil a new “Eat Real Food” advertising campaign as part of the “beef & dairy industry federal handout” dietary guidelines endorsed by Thiel-backed Emily Oster, which features a chatbot that generates detailed instructions on how to shove assorted fruit and vegetables up your ass. The mascot for this campaign is the former boxer Mike Tyson, whose career ended after he bit off the ear of a competitor live on pay-per-view. Tyson now sells weed edibles which come in the shape of human ears, making a joke and a quick buck out of his violent sadism.
On top of this, Mike Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992. Afterwards, he said he would rape his victim and her mother, and also bragged about beating his wife with “the hardest punch I’ve ever thrown.” This is the “mascot” for the Department of Health and Human Services’ “Eat Real Food” campaign. Taking a break from his exhaustive podcasting schedule, Jay Bhattacharya decided to get in on the “fun:”
“Be like Mike Tyson. Eat real food.”
This includes a photoshopped image of the NIH Director wearing the facial tattoo of a sadistic rapist upon his own. Jay Bhattacharya is a father of two children, and he is telling them that a vile, abusive rapist is a role model to take after. Whatever criticisms one might have of previous NIH leadership, there is absolutely no defending this. Why would any young girl in America risk going into STEM when this is the culture they’ll be subjected to?
Jay Bhattacharya is no man, but a vile narcissistic worm who, knowing nothing about science or medicine, instead spouts off an endless stream of nonsense and now waves pom-poms for rapists. While it was a simple Photoshop edit, Jay will never wash off the brand of the rapist he has gleefully embraced. Nor will it ever wash off those who publicly endorsed this utterly useless and willfully ignorant podcaster for the role of NIH Director.
Final Verdict
It is now undeniable that the Department of Health and Human Services, and its underlying agencies, has become a hostile and unsafe working environment. A workplace in which its leadership engages in abuse and sexual harassment, while embracing pedophiles and celebrating rapists, is completely unacceptable. This is nothing more than the Department of Hating Women now.
All of these charlatans leading our federal public health agencies established a pattern of completely unacceptable behavior in the years leading up to their joining the Trump Administration. Those of us who tried to sound the alarm were mocked and ridiculed, while the actual villains saw their misconduct grossly rewarded. Across the board, from journalism to academia, our institutions have completely failed in responding to this depravity.
We will see more stories of unprofessional misconduct against women at HHS emerge in the coming years; it is inevitable. If we are ever to restore science and medicine in America, it must begin with a complete and total eradication of this “culture,” instead of cowardly trying to negotiate some sort of “middle ground” to “restore trust” with those who celebrate pedophiles & rapists. Accept nothing less.