The new head of the CDC has no training in medicine and once helped Peter Thiel develop man-made islands floating outside U.S. territory

President Donald Trump has picked Jim O’Neill, a former investor and critic of health regulations serving under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to take control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, following a tumultuous week in which the agency’s director was forced out.

O’Neill, Kennedy’s deputy at the Department of Health and Human Services, will supplant Susan Monarez, a longtime government scientist who had been the CDC director for less than a month.

Monarez’s lawyers said she refused “to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.”