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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The pharmaceutical industry critic — President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the nation’s top health official — on Thursday laid out his stance on the class of weight-loss drugs known as GLP-1. “The first line of response has to be lifestyle. Eating right, making sure you’re not obese and making sure those LPG drugs have a place,” Kennedy told CNBC’s Jim Cramer from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. . Kennedy was there along with many of Trump’s cabinet nominees as Trump rang the opening bell to kick off Thursday’s session. Kennedy’s criticism of GLP-1 drugs has drawn the attention of Wall Street since he was nominated by Trump last month to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others. Kennedy must be confirmed by the Senate before taking on the role, though in the meantime, investors have sought to gauge what he means for politics. In recent years, the drugs—led by Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Ozempic, along with Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro—have surged in popularity and started a race in the pharmaceutical industry to join the party. Investor optimism about Novo and Eli Lilly’s position in the competition has pushed their shares to impressive levels along the way. Lilly, in particular, has become the world’s most valuable health care company. Some on Wall Street see the market for GLP-1 drugs growing to at least $100 billion by 2030. More than two years ago, Cramer predicted that the active ingredient behind Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro could be the best-selling drug of all time. Cramer’s Charitable Trust, a portfolio used by the CNBC Investing Club, has held a stake in Lilly since 2021. Kennedy has previously suggested that the US should consider capping drug prices and specifically cited Novo’s Ozempic in his argument, which was published in The Wall Street Journal. in September In a post on the social networking site X that same month, Kennedy wrote that weight loss drugs fail to get to the “root” cause of obesity, and instead only “please the wallets of distant Big Pharma executives.” On Thursday, Cramer also asked Kennedy – who has pushed baseless claims that childhood vaccines are linked to autism despite numerous studies disproving those claims – “is against all vaccines.” “Yes, that’s a lie,” Kennedy replied.
