Trump Taps Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Co-author of ‘Great Barrington Declaration,’ to Lead NIH

The NIH — the “nation’s medical research agency” — oversees 27 separate institutes and controls a budget of nearly $48 billion. It is a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 27, 2024

President-elect Donald J. Trump late Tuesday nominated Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., professor of health policy at Standford’s School of Medicine, to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The NIH — the “nation’s medical research agency” — oversees 27 separate institutes and centers and controls a budget of nearly $48 billion. It is a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“I am thrilled to nominate Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health,” Trump announced on X. “Dr. Bhattacharya will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to direct the Nation’s Medical Research, and to make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives.”

Bhattacharya, a vocal critic of COVID-19 lockdowns and a champion of academic freedom, said on X that he is “honored and humbled” by the nomination.

“We will reform American scientific institutions,” he wrote, “so that they are worthy of trust again and will deploy the fruits of excellent science to make America healthy again!”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and Trump’s nominee to lead the HHS, praised the choice, which will need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

“I’m so grateful to President Trump for this spectacular appointment,” Kennedy wrote on X. “Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is the ideal leader to restore NIH as the international template for gold-standard science and evidence-based medicine.”

CHD CEO Mary Holland said, “CHD welcomes the nomination of Dr. Bhattacharya as a scientist of integrity. It is a great sign that he will now have the opportunity to lead this critical health institution.”

CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker agreed. “I believe Dr. Bhattacharya will be an excellent director of NIH and will lead to a complete overhaul of the agency.”

Bhattacharya has long called for changes to NIH. In a January interview with The Washington Post, he said that NIH officials — especially Dr. Anthony Fauci — amassed too much power.

“I would restructure the NIH to allow there to be many more centers of power,” Bhattacharya told the Post, “so that you couldn’t have a small number of scientific bureaucrats, dominating a field for a very long time.”

Fauci directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the NIH, from 1983 to 2022. Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic said in a statement to the Post that Bhattacharya “is respected within the medical community and would ensure that public health returns to science-based solutions — not bureaucratic failed practices.”

The NIH awards roughly 50,000 grants annually to more than 300,000 researchers at over 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions.

Trump also reveals his choice for HHS deputy secretary

Also on Tuesday, Trump announced on X his pick for HHS deputy secretary, Jim O’Neill.

O’Neill — who led earlier reforms at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — “will oversee all operations and improve Management, Transparency, and Accountability to, Make America Healthy Again,” Trump said on X.

Kennedy called O’Neill the “perfect partner” to help him “restore HHS to its incorruptible scientific research and public health priorities,” given his “rich experience in government and industry.”

Bhattacharya co-authored declaration against lockdowns

If confirmed, Bhattacharya, who holds a doctorate in economics and a medical degree from Stanford, will replace Dr. Monica M. Bertagnolli.

He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute. He has authored dozens of peer-reviewed articles.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhattacharya co-authored the “Great Barrington Declaration,” a document criticizing lockdowns for the physical and mental health harms they would cause — especially for children.

He and his co-authors — all infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists — argued for a “Focused Protection” approach to COVID-19 that minimized social harm and mortality until society reached “herd immunity.”

The declaration stated:

“The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.”

The document drew hundreds of thousands of signatures in support — but also drew criticism from top NIH officials, including Fauci and Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., then-director of NIH.

Former NIH leader called him ‘fringe’

In an email to Fauci obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Collins dismissed Bhattacharya and his co-authors as “fringe” experts and called for a “take down” of the declaration, the Post reported.

According to Newsweek, Bhattacharya said on Fox News last year that Fauci and Collins “created an illusion of scientific consensus around their ideas and marginalized anyone that disagreed with them even though there wasn’t a scientific consensus.”

He added, “It’s a pattern of behavior that reflects an abuse of power by American scientific bureaucrats at the very top of our scientific bureaucracies.”

Bhattacharya faced public criticism and censorship for his views, prompting him to become a plaintiff in the anti-censorship lawsuit Murthy v. Missouri.

Bhattacharya is known for fostering scientific debate, rather than delivering authoritarian policy edicts. In September, he organized an academic conference on pandemic policy for hearing and debating diverse perspectives.

Bhattacharya said during the event’s introduction that it’s in the “middle” of dialogue that we learn “what ought to be done … because no nobody has a monopoly on the truth.”

He has called for encouraging academic freedom among NIH scientists, doing more NIH studies that repeat other studies to increase confidence in science, and term limits for NIH leaders, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Calley Means, who co-authored “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health,” called Bhattacharya a “bold, transformative pick.”

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at CHD, told The Defender that the financial entanglement of the U.S. government and pharmaceutical companies has created a “blindspot” that has stunted and distorted scientific research — especially research on vaccines.

“Dr. Bhattacharya is the perfect person to shine the light so bright on our willful ignorance that the world will never be the same,” Jablonowski said.

November 28, 2024 | Comments »

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