newly elected president donald trump has chosen Health economist Dr. Jai Bhattacharya, a critic of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, will lead the National Institutes of Health, the country's leading medical research agency.
Trump said in a statement Tuesday evening that the 56-year-old physician and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine will work closely with Bhattacharya. robert f kennedy jrHis selection to lead the Department of Health and Human Services was to “direct the nation's medical research, and make important discoveries that will improve health, and save lives.”
He wrote, “Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore NIH to the gold standard of medical research as they investigate the underlying causes and solutions to America's greatest health challenges, including our chronic disease and disease crisis. “
getty images
The decision to select Bhattacharya for the post is another reminder of the ongoing impact of the Covid pandemic on politics over public health.
Bhattacharya was one of its three authors Great Barrington DeclarationAn open letter dated October 2020 stating that the lockdown is causing irreparable damage.
The document — which came before the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and during the first Trump administration — promoted “herd immunity,” the idea that low-risk people will be protected from COVID through infection. One should live normally while building immunity against COVID-19. The document says the focus should be on those most at risk rather than on conservation.
“I think the lockdown was the biggest public health mistake,” Bhattacharya said during a panel discussion convened by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in March 2021.
The Great Barrington Declaration was previously embraced by some in the Trump administration, even though it was widely condemned by disease experts. Dr. Francis Collins, then-NIH director, called it dangerous and “not mainstream science.”
His nomination will need to be approved by the Senate.
Trump also announced Tuesday that former HHS official Jim O'Neill will serve as deputy secretary of the massive agency. Trump said O'Neill will “oversee all operations and improve stewardship, transparency, and accountability to build America back healthy,” the president-elect announced.
O'Neill is the only one of Trump's health picks so far who brings previous experience working inside the bureaucracy. Trump's previous picks to lead public health agencies – including Kennedy, Dr. Mehmet Oz For the Administrator and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Dr. Marty Macri To the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration – all are Washington outsiders who are vowing to shake up the agencies.
Bhattacharya, who faced a ban on social media platforms due to his views, was also a plaintiff Murthy vs. MissouriA Supreme Court case that says federal officials improperly suppressed conservative views on social media as part of their efforts to combat misinformation. The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in that case.
After Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he invited Bhattacharya to the company's headquarters to learn how his views were restricted on the platform, which Musk has named X. Recently, Bhattacharya has posted on X about scientists leaving the site and joining the alternative site Bluesky, mocking Bluesky, calling it “his own little echo chamber”.
Bhattacharya has argued that vaccine mandates that have barred unvaccinated people from activities and workplaces have undermined Americans' trust in the public health system.
He is a former research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an economist at the RAND Corporation.
The National Institutes of Health falls under HHS, which Trump has nominated Kennedy to oversee. NIH's $48 billion budget funds medical research on vaccines, cancer, and other diseases through competitive grants to researchers at institutions across the country. The agency also conducts its own research, with thousands of scientists working in NIH laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland.
Advances supported by NIH money include a drug for opioid addiction, a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, several new cancer drugs and the accelerated development of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.