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Dr. Jay Naliboff is a retired OB-GYN who practiced in Farmington for 35 years. In retirement he has maintained a commitment to women’s health as a member of the state Maternal, Fetal and Infant Mortality Review Committee and the Paid Family and Medical Leave Authority. All views are the writer’s own.

As measles continues to break out across the country and food is seemingly being recalled left and right, it’s clear that we need leadership at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) focused on science, evidence and safety.

President Trump’s nominee for FDA commissioner, Dr. Heidi Overton, will be questioned at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Sept. 24.

As a physician, I urge Sen. Susan Collins, a member of the committee, to oppose her nomination.

Mainers, like all Americans, rely on the FDA to keep our food, medicine and vaccines safe, and ensure that they’re effective. We trust, or at least we hope, that their decisions are based on science. Their findings should be based on rigorous research. Their decisions should be impartial.

As a doctor, I frankly do not believe that Dr. Overton would follow the science or be impartial as FDA commissioner.

That’s because Dr. Overton has an extremely troubling and vocal record. She has opposed school vaccine requirements, and she recently stood beside President Trump as he announced changes to childhood vaccine recommendations, including an effort to separate the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three individual shots. That’s despite the fact that the MMR vaccine is safe, effective and, for busy families, convenient.

For those of us who cared for patients, such undermining of vaccines is deeply concerning. We are already working to rebuild trust in vaccines at a time when measles has returned as a serious public health threat. The FDA commissioner should be someone who will make decisions based on the best available evidence and help patients understand why that evidence matters.

Dr. Overton’s record on abortion raises similar concerns.

She has celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, called abortion “corrosive to children, women, and society” and advocated for restrictions on mifepristone, also known as medication abortion, including access through telehealth. Those positions are particularly relevant because the FDA is conducting a re-review of mifepristone — 25 years after it rightly approved it. It’s not unlikely that an anti-abortion FDA commissioner would put a thumb on the scale against this safe, effective medication.

Just as physicians like myself are concerned about Dr. Overton’s nomination, Sen. Collins should be as well. Sen. Collins has claimed to support reproductive rights. She has been supportive of vaccines.

Unfortunately, her record on confirmation hearings tells a different story. She voted to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who later joined the Supreme Court majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the decision that overturned Roe. And just last year, she voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services. Kennedy has since overseen significant changes to federal vaccine policy at odds with the medical consensus.

Both of these votes have led us to the situation we’re in today. Medication abortion access is at risk. Vaccination rates are declining in many areas of the country. And foodborne illnesses have sickened tens of thousands Americans this year. 

If Susan Collins truly values reproductive freedom, vaccine uptake and the general health of Mainers, she must reject Dr. Overton’s nomination.