President-elect Donald Trump has nominated a critic of COVID-19 health measures to lead the Food and Drug Administration.

Maryland scholars on Monday alternately described President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins researcher, surgeon and author — as a “courageous leader” and a “reasonable choice,” who nevertheless espouses some “worrisome” views.

Makary is a pancreatic surgeon at Johns Hopkins who became known for battling medical mistakes and in recent years has been an outspoken critic of COVID-19 policies.

The nominee, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins, has criticized the use of pesticides on food and the industry turning against “natural fat.”

President-elect Trump has picked Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins’s surgeon who has espoused contrarian views about the COVID-19 pandemic, to lead the Federal Drug Administration. Makary is a surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University and an author.

President-elect Donald Trump has selected Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon who criticized the Biden administration’s Covid response, to lead the FDA. “FDA has lost the trust of Americans, and has lost sight of its primary goal as a regulator,” Trump said in a statement late Friday, adding Makary would “course-correct” the agency if confirmed.

As FDA commissioner, Makary would report to the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. To lead HHS, Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental activist who has spread misinformation about the safety of vaccines and one of several unconventional Trump picks for top administration jobs.