The New Republic reports:

Donald Trump has tapped Deputy Health Secretary Jim O’Neill, a market fundamentalist Silicon Valley investor and long-time associate of billionaire Peter Thiel, as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control.

Taking the place of Susan Monarez, whose firing has raised alarm over the dangerous incompetence of the health department under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., O’Neill will bring to the role no medical or scientific background.

But he does have a history of feverish advocacy of deregulation and libertarianism, as the progressive group Public Citizen highlighted when he was nominated for his current role at Trump’s health department.

In a 2014 speech, for instance, O’Neill—then managing director of Thiel’s Mithril Capital—proposed allowing drugs onto the market without first determining whether they even work. “Let people start using them, at their own risk,” he said. “Let’s prove efficacy after they’ve been legalized.” [Continue reading…]