President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he plans to appoint Oz Mehmet, a famed heart surgeon and former daytime television host, as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Oz, a 64-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon, has no experience running a government agency and has been accused by many American doctors and other health experts of selling pseudoscience.

If his nomination is approved by the Senate, Oz will lead a federal agency that provides health care to more than 160 million people and oversees critical programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“I know Dr. Oz for many years, and I am confident he will fight to ensure everyone in America gets the best health care possible so our country can be great and healthy again!” Trump said this in a statement on his TruthSocial platform.

Trump said Oz would work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom the former president nominated last week to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Together, Trump said in his statement, the two men would take on “the disease industrial complex and all the terrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”

“Our broken health care system is harming everyday Americans and crushing our country’s budget,” Trump said. “Dr. Oz will be a leader in driving disease prevention. He will also reduce waste and fraud within our nation’s most expensive government agency.”

The son of Turkish parents, Oz graduated from Harvard before earning his medical degree and master’s degree in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania. He subsequently became a professor of surgery at Columbia University. After rising to fame as a celebrity doctor on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show, Oz hosted ‘The Dr.’ from 2009 to 2022. Oz Show’. In 2008, Time Magazine included Oz on its list of “100 Most Influential People.”

But Oz is a controversial figure in the medical community whose television appearances have drawn criticism from fellow doctors who say he supports questionable alternative medicine and unproven weight loss products. In 2012, Oz invited a woman onto his show who claimed she was psychic and could communicate with the dead. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Oz promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment.

During a 2014 congressional hearing, then-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) scolded Oz for his weight-loss product hype.

“I don’t understand why you have to say things like this because you know it’s not true,” McCaskill told Oz. “So why – if you have this great megaphone and this great ability to communicate – why would you cheapen your show by saying things like that?”

Following Trump’s announcement Tuesday, many public health experts took to social media to denounce Oz.

Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in public health law and directs the World Health Organization’s Center on Global Health Law, said Oz was unfit to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“He spreads conspiracy theories about vaccines and fake medicines,” Gostin said. “He benefits from fringe medical ideas. By nominating RFK Jr & Mehmet Oz, Trump is giving the middle finger to science. After working in public health for 40 years, it is completely disheartening.”

“Madness,” wrote Timothy Caulfield, professor of health law and science policy at the University of Alberta. ‘Another anti-scientific quack given power over a scientifically informed institution.’

In 2022, Oz ran an unsuccessful campaign to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate. Backed by Trump, he cast himself as a moderate Republican who wanted to reduce inflation and crime, but was ultimately defeated by Democrat John Fetterman.

In choosing Oz, Trump continues his strategy of nominating unorthodox television personalities to his administration for his second term: Last week he nominated Pete Hegseth, a National Guard veteran and host of “Fox & Friends,” as defense secretary. On Monday, he nominated former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy, known as co-host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business and a former reality TV star, to lead the Department of Transportation.