The resignation of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary is being treated in much of Washington as another personnel shakeup: a clash over vaping, drug approvals, agency turmoil, and political pressure. But beneath the surface is a larger public-health question that has barely entered the replacement debate: will the next FDA commissioner finally confront the agency’s legal and scientific responsibilities over radiofrequency radiation from wireless devices? Reuters reported that Makary resigned on May 12, 2026, and that Deputy Commissioner Kyle Diamantas will temporarily lead the FDA; earlier reporting said names under consideration for permanent leadership included former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and former acting FDA Commissioner Brett Giroir.
That matters because the FDA is not merely a drug-and-food agency. Under the electronic product radiation provisions originally enacted as Public Law 90-602, now codified in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, “electronic product radiation” includes non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation, and “electronic products” include products that contain electronic circuits and emit such radiation. The statute directs the HHS Secretary to establish and carry out an electronic-product radiation-control program, including research, exposure evaluation, performance standards, and programs to minimize unnecessary radiation exposure.
This is the buried issue in the FDA succession fight. The FCC may license spectrum and enforce radiofrequency exposure limits, but the FDA itself says it shares regulatory responsibilities for cell phones with the FCC and provides scientific input and expertise to the FCC on radiofrequency energy. FDA’s own cell-phone page states that FDA is responsible for collecting, analyzing, and making available scientific information about hazards and control of electronic-product radiation.
The problem is that the scientific record has not stood still. The National Toxicology Program’s cell-phone radiofrequency studies found clear evidence of an association between high RFR exposure and malignant schwannomas of the heart in male rats, some evidence for malignant gliomas in the brains of male rats, and some evidence for adrenal-gland tumors. NTP also reported associations with DNA damage in specific tissues, while warning that animal findings cannot be directly translated to normal human phone use.
Then came the institutional retreat. NTP says NIEHS completed follow-up work using a smaller RFR exposure system, but that the system was technically challenging, resource intensive, and not representative of newer technologies such as 4G, 4G-LTE, or 5G. The agency now says no further work with that RFR exposure system will be conducted and NIEHS has no further plans to conduct additional RFR exposure studies at this time.
That is exactly why the FDA leadership question should not be treated as routine. Public Law 90-602 was written for moments like this: when electronic technologies become ubiquitous, when exposure science evolves, and when public agencies must keep pace with risk. A fair legal analysis can debate whether any particular budget decision constitutes a statutory violation. But as a matter of public-health governance, it is difficult to reconcile a major federal cancer-and-bioeffects signal, a statutory research-and-control mandate, and a decision not to continue federal RFR exposure studies as though nothing urgent has happened.
The court system has already exposed part of the regulatory failure. In Environmental Health Trust v. FCC, the D.C. Circuit held in 2021 that the FCC failed to provide a reasoned explanation for its conclusion that its radiofrequency guidelines adequately protect against harmful effects unrelated to cancer. The court did not decide the underlying science, but it did fault the agency for failing to address evidence on non-cancer effects, children, long-term exposure, RF pulsation or modulation, 5G-related technological changes, and environmental harm.
This makes the FDA’s role even more central. The FCC is not a medical or toxicology agency. It is a communications regulator. If the FCC relies on health agencies for the biological risk assessment, then the FDA and HHS cannot credibly stand aside while old exposure assumptions remain in force. The statute places electronic-product radiation control squarely inside HHS/FDA’s orbit, and the FDA’s own public pages acknowledge its role in advising the FCC and informing the public.
The scientific pressure has only increased. A 2025 WHO-partially-funded systematic review of RF-EMF cancer studies in laboratory animals judged the certainty of evidence for increased glioma risk as high and the certainty for malignant heart schwannomas in male rats as high. At the same time, the authors emphasized that extrapolating animal cancer bioassays to human RF-EMF risk remains complex.
A 2026 Environmental Health paper by Ronald Melnick and Joel Moskowitz went further, applying benchmark-dose analysis to animal cancer and reproductive data. The authors concluded that current FCC/ICNIRP public whole-body limits are 15- to 900-fold higher than their estimates for exposure associated with a 1-in-100,000 cancer risk, depending on exposure duration, and 8- to 24-fold higher than levels they estimate would protect male reproductive health. That is not an official FDA risk assessment, but it is exactly the kind of analysis a serious FDA commissioner should be prepared to evaluate publicly.
Meanwhile, the government’s own public messaging has become inconsistent. In January 2026, Reuters reported that HHS would launch a study on cellphone radiation and that FDA had removed old webpages saying cellphones were not dangerous, even as some agency pages continued to say there was no credible evidence of health problems from cellphone radiation. FDA’s still-accessible cell-phone page says the “weight of scientific evidence” has not linked cellphone RFR with health problems and says the evidence does not show danger to children and teens.
That is the real scandal: not merely that an FDA commissioner resigned, but that possible successors are being discussed without any clear test of whether they will enforce the radiation-safety mission Congress created more than half a century ago.
Kyle Diamantas, now acting commissioner, comes from the FDA’s Human Foods Program. FDA describes him as Deputy Commissioner for Food, overseeing nutrition and food-safety activities, resource allocation, risk-prioritization, policy initiatives, and major response activities involving human foods. That is not the same as a public record of leadership on wireless radiation health risk.
Stephen Hahn, one of the names reportedly under consideration, served as FDA commissioner from December 17, 2019, to January 20, 2021. He is a physician, scientist, and former oncology leader, with a background in radiation oncology and executive medical leadership. Brett Giroir served as Assistant Secretary for Health and briefly as acting FDA commissioner in November and December 2019; FDA describes him as a physician, scientist, pediatrician, former DARPA official, and federal health leader.
But the public question is not whether Hahn or Giroir have impressive résumés. They do. The question is whether recycling former FDA leadership is the right answer if the agency’s radiation-control responsibilities have remained under-addressed through the very years when the NTP findings, FCC remand, and wireless-safety debate demanded a more transparent federal response.
The next commissioner does not need to prejudge every disputed scientific question. But the next commissioner should have to answer a basic set of questions before confirmation: Will FDA conduct or commission an updated RF-EMF risk assessment? Will FDA clarify whether current exposure limits are protective for long-term, chronic, developmental, reproductive, and non-thermal endpoints? Will FDA explain its interpretation of Public Law 90-602 in the wireless era? Will FDA update public-facing statements so they do not overstate certainty? Will FDA tell the FCC, in plain language, whether the 1996-era exposure framework is still medically defensible?
Advocates often point to experts such as Devra Davis, founder of Environmental Health Trust and a long-time public voice on cellphone and wireless-radiation health risks, as examples of the kind of RF-bioeffects expertise missing from the usual FDA leadership conversation. Whether or not any specific person is considered for commissioner, the broader point is legitimate: an FDA that oversees radiation-emitting electronic products should not treat wireless radiation expertise as irrelevant to the job.
The FDA vacancy is therefore a test. It can become another inside-Washington appointment fight, dominated by vaping, pharmaceuticals, abortion-drug politics, and agency management. Or it can become the moment when HHS and the White House are forced to confront a neglected legal mandate: protecting the public from unnecessary electronic-product radiation.
If the administration wants a credible reset at the FDA, it should not simply ask who can stabilize the agency. It should ask who will enforce the parts of FDA law that have been allowed to fade into the background while wireless exposure became a condition of modern life.
The next FDA commissioner should be asked, on the record, whether Public Law 90-602 still means what it says.
And if the answer is yes, then wireless radiation safety can no longer be treated as somebody else’s problem.
