Statement of CSPI President Dr. Peter G. Lurie

Surgeon Generals past like Luther Terry and C. Everett Koop used the power of their public office to take on Big Tobacco and help reduce cigarette smoking and thus lung cancer mortality. In very sharp contrast, Donald Trump’s Surgeon General nominee, Dr. Nicole Saphier, is an investor in Philip Morris International and stands to profit the more cigarettes are sold.

In effect, Dr. Saphier is harnessing part of her family’s financial well-being to a product that has killed millions of Americans. No public health advocate worth their salt, much less a Surgeon General nominee, would dream of associating with tobacco companies in this way.

Dr. Saphier invested not just in tobacco, but in a whole host of pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers of ultra-processed foods. To invest in a company is to root for it to succeed in the hope you might profit from it. To root for the tobacco industry, of all industries, is to root for increased sales, breathtakingly bad judgment and immediately disqualifying.

If that weren’t bad enough, Dr. Saphier has supplemented her income by selling dietary supplements drops of her own. At least one of these has an ingredient, kava kava root, so dangerous that the Department of Defense includes it on a list of prohibited supplement ingredients. On her social media, she has hinted that her rosemary and sage drops might be useful against Alzheimer’s. It is quackery, pure and simple—designed to lighten American’s wallets, pad her own, and in effect diverting patients from real drugs that might actually work.

We urge the Senate to vote ‘no’ on the nomination of Nicole Saphier to be Surgeon General, and we urge the administration, should there be a fourth nominee for this important job, to pick a candidate who has not looked to profit at the expense of America’s health.

# # #