Pharmaceutical industry critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the nation’s top health official — on Thursday elaborated on his stance about the fast-growing class of weight-loss drugs known as GLP-1s. “The first line of response should be lifestyle. It should eating well, making sure you that you don’t get obese, and that those GLP drugs have a place,” Kennedy told CNBC’s Jim Cramer from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Kennedy was there alongside many of Trump’s cabinet nominees as Trump rang the opening bell to kick off Thursday’s session. Kennedy’s past criticism of GLP-1 drugs has been in focus on Wall Street since Trump last month nominated him to run the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other agencies. In recent years, the drugs — headlined by Novo Nordisk ‘s Wegovy and Ozempic, along with Eli Lilly ‘s Zepbound and Mounjaro — have soared in popularity and set off a race in the pharmaceutical industry to join the party. Cramer’s Charitable Trust, the portfolio used by the CNBC Investing Club, owns a stake in Eli Lilly. More than two years ago , Cramer predicted that the active ingredient behind Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro could become the best-selling drug of all time. Some on Wall Street see the market for GLP-1 drugs growing to at least $100 billion by 2030. On Thursday, Cramer also asked Kennedy — who has pushed unfounded claims that child vaccines are linked to autism despite numerous studies that debunk such assertions — whether he is against “all vaccines.” “Yeah, that’s untrue,” Kennedy responded.
Weight-loss drugs shouldn’t replace healthy eating, not against all vaccine