Trump faucets Jay Bhattacharya as director of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen well being economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a critic of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, to steer the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, the nation’s main medical analysis company.
Trump, in a press release Tuesday night, mentioned Bhattacharya, a 56-year-old doctor and professor at Stanford College Faculty of Drugs, will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choose to steer the Division of Well being and Human Providers, “to direct the Nation’s Medical Analysis, and to make vital discoveries that can enhance Well being, and save lives.”
“Collectively, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Customary of Medical Analysis as they study the underlying causes of, and options to, America’s greatest Well being challenges, together with our Disaster of Power Sickness and Illness,” he wrote.
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The choice to decide on Bhattacharya for the publish is yet one more reminder of the continued affect of the COVID pandemic on the politics on public well being.
Bhattacharya was one in all three authors of the Nice Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 open letter sustaining that lockdowns had been inflicting irreparable hurt.
The doc — which got here earlier than the supply of COVID-19 vaccines and throughout the first Trump administration — promoted “herd immunity,” the concept folks at low threat ought to reside usually whereas build up immunity to COVID-19 by way of an infection. Safety ought to focus as an alternative on folks at larger threat, the doc mentioned.
“I believe the lockdowns had been the only greatest public well being mistake,” Bhattacharya mentioned in March 2021 throughout a panel dialogue convened by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Nice Barrington Declaration was embraced by some within the first Trump administration, even because it was broadly denounced by illness consultants. Then-NIH director Dr. Francis Collins known as it harmful and “not mainstream science.”
His nomination would should be accredited by the Senate.
Trump on Tuesday additionally introduced that Jim O’Neill, a former HHS official, will function deputy secretary of the sprawling company. Trump mentioned O’Neill “will oversee all operations and enhance Administration, Transparency, and Accountability to, Make America Wholesome Once more,” the president-elect introduced.
O’Neill is the one one in all Trump’s well being picks to this point who brings earlier expertise working contained in the paperwork to the job. Trump’s earlier decisions to steer public well being companies — together with Kennedy, Dr. Mehmet Oz for Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Providers administrator and Dr. Marty Makary for Meals and Drug Administration commissioner — have all been Washington outsiders who’re vowing to shake up the companies.
Bhattacharya, who confronted restrictions on social media platforms due to his views, was additionally a plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri, a Supreme Courtroom case contending that federal officers improperly suppressed conservative views on social media as a part of their efforts to fight misinformation. The Supreme Courtroom sided with the Biden administration in that case.
After Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he invited Bhattacharya to the corporate’s headquarters to study extra about how his views had been restricted on the platform, which Musk renamed X. Extra just lately, Bhattacharya has posted on X about scientists leaving the location and becoming a member of the choice web site Bluesky, mocking Bluesky as “their very own little echo chamber.”
Bhattacharya has argued that vaccine mandates that barred unvaccinated folks from actions and workplaces undermined People’ belief within the public well being system.
He’s a former analysis fellow on the Hoover Establishment and an economist on the RAND Company.
The Nationwide Institutes of Well being falls beneath HHS, which Trump has nominated Kennedy to supervise. The NIH’s $48 billion funds funds medical analysis on vaccines, most cancers and different ailments by way of aggressive grants to researchers at establishments throughout the nation. The company additionally conducts its personal analysis with hundreds of scientists working at NIH labs in Bethesda, Maryland.
Amongst advances that had been supported by NIH cash are a medicine for opioid habit, a vaccine to stop cervical most cancers, many new most cancers medicine and the speedy improvement of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
