Large pharmas, biotechs down as industries grapple with RFK Jr. at HHS

It’s not just vaccine makers that are down following the announcement that former President Donald Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his HHS secretary: Pharma and biotech stocks are also feeling the pinch.

That’s likely because Kennedy Jr., an avowed skeptic of vaccines, also has plans to shake things up at the FDA, and not necessarily to benefit drugmakers. In late October in an X post, he said that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end.”

Kennedy Jr. has said he would push for major job cuts at the agency, a move that could potentially slow down the drug approval process.

In another post on X in late September, he took aim at Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) blockbuster drug type 2 diabetes drug Ozempic (semaglutide), often used off-label as a weight loss treatment. He claimed that the drug addresses the symptoms of obesity rather than the root cause — the food system — and said it and similar drugs were only benefitting the wallets of pharma company executives.

The hardest-hit large U.S. pharma and biotech stocks on Friday are Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN), which are both down ~5%. Other big pharma names in the red include Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY), both down ~4%. Prominent biotechs that are down include Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) (~5%) and Gilead Sciences (GILD) (~4%).

Many European-based pharmas such as GSK (GSK), AstraZeneca (AZN), and Roche (OTCQX:RHHBY) are also off, but not to the extent their U.S. counterparts are.

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