Four of the eight people appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to an influential health panel in September own stock in companies that make drugs and other products affected by the group’s decisions, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The investments were described in conflict-of-interest waivers that gave the members permission to serve on the panel, the United States Preventive Services Task Force. The Times obtained the waivers through a public records request.
The task force evaluates evidence for services like colonoscopies, H.I.V. prevention medications, depression screening and more, and its recommendations both inform doctors’ decisions and determine what insurers must pay for. They also affect the popularity, and therefore the profitability, of numerous drugs and medical devices, such as statins for cardiovascular disease prevention and the special X-ray machines used for mammograms.
The type of waiver the members received can be given to employees in various parts of the federal government. But several former task force members and federal officials said that, in the case of the task force, such conflicts could undermine the scientific rigor of the recommendations as well as public trust in them.
Until President Trump and Mr. Kennedy took office last year, and a Supreme Court ruling gave Mr. Kennedy more control over the task force, the panel operated independently of politics, and such financial conflicts were not considered acceptable, according to former members and federal officials.
Among the new appointees, Dr. Patrick K. Hunter, a pediatrician who served on the Florida Board of Medicine; Dr. Ronald P. Karlsberg, a cardiovascular expert; Dr. Venkatesh L. Murthy, another cardiovascular expert; and Dr. Dennis W. Wulfeck, a diagnostic radiologist, all own stock in the pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson, according to the waivers.
Dr. Hunter also owns stock in Bristol Myers Squibb and nine other companies whose work could intersect with the panel’s business. Dr. Karlsberg owns stock or has an unspecified other “financial interest” in Merck and 16 other such companies. Dr. Murthy owns stock in Merck, Pfizer, the insurer Cigna and 16 other companies. And Dr. Wulfeck owns stock in Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, CVS Health and 17 others.
Mr. Kennedy’s other four appointees, as well as seven of the eight members already on the task force, did not receive waivers for any investments specific to the medical industry. The other older appointee, Dr. Sarah Wiehe, received a waiver for such investments, but she said in an email that she no longer owned them and that they had been in a portfolio managed by a third party.
The waivers do not make clear whether the new appointees’ holdings are in portfolios managed by third parties. Dr. Wulfeck declined to comment on his investments, and the other three members did not respond to requests for comment.
Historically, any candidate for the task force would have been asked to sell these stocks, said Dr. Quyen Ngo-Metzger, who evaluated conflicts of interest as the scientific director supporting the task force at its parent agency, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, from 2012 to 2019. If a prospective member had refused to sell, she said, they would not have been appointed.
“When you have this much involvement with industry, pharmaceutical stocks and all of these, it really undermines the trust in the process and the trust in the people,” said Dr. Ngo-Metzger, who reviewed the waivers at The Times’s request, in her capacity as a former AHRQ employee.
Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees AHRQ, said task force members were subject to different ethics requirements now because the Supreme Court’s ruling had made them “special government employees,” a different legal status than they had before.
“Federal law provides that a waiver issued in accordance with the legal standard is an appropriate remedy for a conflict of interest,” Ms. Hilliard said. “AHRQ is updating its procedures and criteria to reflect these changes in member status.”
The waivers say that the members must still consider whether they need to recuse themselves from an individual topic being considered by the task force if it has particular relevance to their financial interests. However, Dr. Michael Silverstein, who led the task force until his term ended this March, said large pharmaceutical companies made such a range of products that the conflicts would touch numerous topics.
The waivers contained an explanation from Dr. Roger D. Klein, the AHRQ director, on why he believed the new members should be allowed to serve, including that each member, as one of 16, individually has “no power to render a final decision on behalf of the United States.”
Dr. Klein added that the medical companies did not account for the members’ full investment portfolios, and that “matters on which you work are not likely to affect the financial interests of all of your assets named in this waiver simultaneously.” (He described the companies as being no more than 15 percent of Dr. Karlsberg’s portfolio, 20 percent of Dr. Murthy’s and Dr. Wulfeck’s and 45 percent of Dr. Hunter’s.)
Dr. Silverstein, the former task force chairman, said those arguments were not persuasive to him.
The percentage thresholds were “something that we never thought about,” he said, noting that the task force had previously taken amounts as small as $1,000 seriously. Every member matters even if they are only one of 16, he added.
“You’re asking someone to join a deliberative body where recommendations are made through discussion, consensus building and a vote,” Dr. Silverstein said. “To say that a certain level of conflict of interest is permissible because you’re only one within a larger group, to me, does not pass the smell test.”
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