Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. privately said he wants the federal government to recommend a cancer-detection test that has sharply divided medical professionals but has close financial ties to the Make America Healthy Again movement.
Those ties could prove influential in the coming weeks as Kennedy moves to reshape preventative health care, and crucial votes Wednesday at the Food and Drug Administration stand to determine the future of this industry.
In a private meeting last winter to discuss overhauling a panel of advisers that determines essential preventive services, Kennedy said he’d like it to recommend multi-cancer blood tests, according to a former Health and Human Services official who was in the meeting.
The meeting included Kennedy’s senior counselor Stefanie Spear; chief policy counselor Ken Callahan; Mitchell Hailstone, a former director of public strategy; and Roger Klein, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
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Another former HHS official said he repeatedly heard Kennedy say he’d like the task force to recommend the tests.
Those tests are controversial in preventive health. They can detect early-stage cancer when it’s more treatable but can also give false alarms that push patients toward additional interventions they wouldn’t have otherwise sought. Leading medical associations don’t recommend for or against them for people without symptoms.
But the industry has deep ties to MAHA and has Kennedy’s ear. Makers of those cancer-screening tests and scans are sponsoring next week’s Make America Healthy Again Summit, paying to mingle with top Trump administration health officials as they petition the federal government to endorse their products.
Four companies that make or sell early-detection cancer tests or scans are involved in the one-day, corporate-sponsored summit, where health industry leaders and administration officials will share the stage at the Waldorf Astoria to discuss longevity, prevention and other hot topics in the MAHA movement Kennedy leads.
Biotech company Grail, whose multi-cancer blood test Galleri is up for a FDA vote Wednesday, and Prenuvo, which sells a full-body MRI scan, are among the summit’s sponsors. Grail CEO Joshua Ofman and Superpower CEO Max Marchione, whose company sells Galleri, are slated to speak on panels.
So is longevity entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who helped design another full-body scan sold by Ezra, a company acquired by Function Health, which is led by Kennedy’s friend Mark Hyman.
Galleri uses blood from a single draw to screen for a DNA signal shared by more than 50 cancer types. Superpower sells it for $949. Prenuvo sells its whole-body scan for around $2,500.
Companies making and selling these tests have been seeking buy-in from the experts whose recommendations guide millions of Americans on when and how to get screened for cancer.
“Screening is much more complicated than just ‘Do the test and if you find something it’s wonderful,’” said Otis Brawley, an oncologist at Johns Hopkins University who has consulted for Grail.
One of those groups the industry is looking for approval from is the Preventive Services Task Force, a panel of outside advisers whose recommendations determine which screening tests private insurers must cover for free.
Kennedy, who has previously called the task force “lackadaisical,” named eight new members last week as part of an effort to reshape the body. He hasn’t publicly said how he wants the task force to operate. But, in a departure from the norm of filling it with primary-care doctors, he did appoint specialists to the panel, among them a radiologist.
The group hasn’t issued a recommendation for or against diagnostics like the ones sold by Grail and Prenuvo.
Prenuvo’s chief medical officer, Dan Durand, said “it’s fantastic” to have a radiologist on the task force. But Durand insisted his company isn’t seeking reimbursement for its full-body MRI by sponsoring the MAHA Summit.
“That is not what we’re looking for,” Durand told The Washington Sun. “We’re looking to be understood, we’re looking to contribute to the conversation about ending the chronic-disease epidemic.”
Neither Grail nor Prenuvo would say how much they paid for their sponsorships. Superpower, Hyman and HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
Asked about Grail’s participation in the summit, Ofman told The Sun, “We welcome the opportunity to participate in any forum that discusses health policy to improve the health of Americans through transitioning from a broken system to one focused on prevention and early detection.”
Earlier this year, summit organizer MAHA Action highlighted how a full-body scan detected early-stage lung cancer in Shira Boehler, the wife of Trump administration official and summit panelist Adam Boehler.
Grail is currently lobbying the FDA to approve Galleri, which would be the first approved multi-cancer early-detection test on the U.S. market. An advisory panel is scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to recommend the agency grant approval.
Congress has already cleared a pathway for these tests. In February, President Donald Trump signed a law allowing Medicare to start paying for FDA-approved versions starting in 2028.
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