Public trust in health agencies has faltered as perceptions have grown that science is increasingly politicized. This is driving calls for a rigorous reexamination of the substances deemed safe in everyday American life. Dr. George Tidmarsh is part of the movement.
As a pediatrician and biotech executive, his work challenges long-standing FDA assumptions about food and pharmaceutical additives. With a particular focus on talc—an industrial agent now under international scrutiny for potential carcinogenicity—Tidmarsh is pushing for a new era of public health transparency. His efforts focus on regulatory standards, with calls for reforming the editorial practices of scientific journals. He wants to prioritize independent data over institutional inertia.
Dr. Tidmarsh is a neonatologist by training, former CEO of La Jolla Pharmaceuticals, and a contributor to academic journals. “None of my training over decades really focused on toxic additives to nutrition, to food supply, to infant formulas,” he says. That realization fuels his latest mission: to put science—not politics—back at the center of public health.
Tidmarsh recently published a review in the Journal of the Academy of Public Health that reevaluates the FDA’s long-standing list of food and drug additives labeled “generally regarded as safe,” or GRAS. Chief among his concerns is talc, an additive with a long history of use and a growing body of evidence linking it to serious health risks. “The revelation for me was that talc is added to our food supply,” Tidmarsh says. “It literally took me weeks to realize this… I kept knocking myself on the head and saying, wow.”
Talc has been used in pharmaceuticals and food manufacturing as a lubricant and bulking agent. It ensures powders flow through machinery and that pills press cleanly. “It did play a role,” he explains, “but we didn’t know at the time” that it could be harmful. “There’s no villain… it was done with good intent, but we now have updated data and we need to replace it.”
That updated data includes the recent conclusion from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer that talc is “probably carcinogenic,” leading the European Union to ban it in cosmetics by 2027. Tidmarsh emphasizes that modern alternatives like magnesium stearate are widely available, safer, and often cheaper. “In fact, it may be… less expensive to replace talc,” he notes. Many generic versions of popular drugs like Lipitor and Synthroid already use alternatives. “One of my recommendations to the FDA is to alert pharmacies… to dispense and interchange to the cheaper generic drugs that do not contain talc.”
He sees this kind of scientific reevaluation as long overdue. “Why have we not examined the safety of additives to our food supply?” he asks. “It’s long overdue.” Tidmarsh credits Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary for “elevating the discussion” and motivating his deep-dive into the overlooked additives. “Public health is a major part of what my responsibility is,” he says.
His focus on transparency and reform extends beyond food and drugs. Tidmarsh is also a driving force behind the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, which seeks to challenge the gatekeeping and politicization he says became rampant during the pandemic. “Editors in general of major scientific journals exercised political interdiction to ensure that a certain narrative was maintained,” he says. “That is absolutely antithetical to the scientific process.”
Unlike traditional journals, this one allows any accepted member of its academy—scientists vetted by a board of directors—to publish without editorial veto. Crucially, the reviews of these publications are also public. “The evaluation and review of the publication… is done actually in public,” he says. “We hope to eliminate the politicization of science.”
Tidmarsh sees a greater cost to inaction than to reform. “It’s very possible that some of these additives have triggered the explosion in some of the problems we’re facing,” he says, pointing to inflammatory bowel diseases and the use of talc in medical treatments specifically designed to provoke inflammation. “We’re ingesting talc,” he says. “Why not prevent it?”
The stakes, he argues, go beyond price tags. “We may save billions of dollars and improve the quality of life by eliminating some of these substances,” he says. As for the pushback, he describes it as minimal. “The only pushback I’ve seen was a Wall Street Journal editorial board piece, which was unsourced,” he says. “I don’t understand why anyone would oppose this.”
Tidmarsh rejects the notion that science ever settles. “That is an oxymoron phrase,” he says. He cites new revelations about gravity and the shift in pediatric guidance around peanut allergies as proof that scientific understanding must evolve. “This is… an extension of that principle,” he says. “To question their conclusions, question their practices, incorporate new information.”
He believes science can regain public trust while he acknowledges that the American people don’t trust some agencies any longer. “My hope is that we will move science and these health agencies back to a place where they are the gold standard.”
