President-elect Donald Trump has chosen health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a critic of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, to lead the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s leading medical research agency.
Trump, in a statement Tuesday evening, said Bhattacharya, a 56-year-old physician and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, “to direct the Nation’s Medical Research, and to make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives.”
“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest Health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease,” he wrote.
The decision to choose Bhattacharya for the post is yet another reminder of the ongoing impact of the COVID pandemic on the politics of public health.
Bhattacharya was one of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 open letter maintaining that lockdowns were causing irreparable harm.
The document — which came before the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and during the first Trump administration — promoted “herd immunity,” the idea that people at low risk should live normally while building up immunity to COVID-19 through infection. Protection should focus instead on people at higher risk, the document said.
“I think the lockdowns were the single biggest public health mistake,” Bhattacharya said in March 2021 during a panel discussion convened by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Great Barrington Declaration was embraced by some in the first Trump administration, even as it was widely denounced by disease experts. Then- NIH director Dr. Francis Collins called it dangerous and “not mainstream science.”
His nomination would need to be approved by the Senate.
Trump on Tuesday also announced that Jim O’Neill, a former HHS official, will serve as deputy secretary of the sprawling agency. Trump said O’Neill “will oversee all operations and improve Management, Transparency, and Accountability to, Make America Healthy Again,” 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 to the job. Trump’s previous choices to lead public health agencies — including Kennedy, Dr. Mehmet Oz for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator and Dr. Marty Makary for Food and Drug Administration commissioner — have all been Washington outsiders who are vowing to shake up the agencies.
Bhattacharya, who faced restrictions on social media platforms because of his views, was also a plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri, a Supreme Court case contending that 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 more about how his views had been restricted on the platform, which Musk renamed X. More recently, Bhattacharya has posted on X about scientists leaving the site and joining the alternative site Bluesky, mocking Bluesky as “their own little echo chamber.”
Bhattacharya has argued that vaccine mandates that barred unvaccinated people from activities and workplaces 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. The NIH’s $48 billion budget funds medical research on vaccines, cancer and other diseases through competitive grants to researchers at institutions across the nation. The agency also conducts its own research with thousands of scientists working at NIH labs in Bethesda, Maryland.
Among advances that were supported by NIH money are a medication for opioid addiction, a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, many new cancer drugs and the speedy development of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
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Republished with permission from The Associated Press.
9 comments
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PeterH
November 27, 2024 at 8:56 am
Another Trump fool to be ignored!
EARL PITTS AMERICAN
November 27, 2024 at 9:18 am
PeterH = CHASTIZED
Hung Wiil
November 27, 2024 at 4:17 pm
PeterH,
Yes, please ignore him, and Trump, and me. We’ve got this. We’ll make the policy and govern the country. You can whine online. Fair trade.
TJC
November 28, 2024 at 1:23 pm
“We”?
“We’ll make the policy and govern…”?
Delusions of grandeur, man. Trump and his cronies wouldn’t sit down and drink a beer with you to save your life. They got what they wanted out of you: blind obedience. They don’t need your help, your advice, your pitiful opinions — they taught you all of that, they already know.
But they’ll get back to you for your midterm vote — before ignoring you again.
THE EARL PITTS AMERICAN FAN CLUB
November 27, 2024 at 9:17 am
Good Morn ‘Ting Sage Patriots & Dook 4 Brains Leftists,
Please pardon a little off topic commentary ….. however there is really no appropriate artical to place this topic under.
“Well what is the topic, Sage Earl”?
“ASKED EVERYBODY”:
“America, its the relevent ISREAL/HAMAS cease-fire agreement”, said the Sage Earl.
The “Media” has yet to receive their “Dook 4 Brains Leftist Talking Points” on this cease-fire …. so at this point in time “Lefty” media is not able to cover the subject.
The dropping of the lawfair cases against Trump and the HAMAS cease-fire agreement have some interesting things in common.
1.) The particepants in the domestic Lawfair against Trump.
AND
2.) The International travasity of the HAMAS Slaughter of The Jews and the ongoing war on the Jews both are right on “THE EDGE” of having Trump bring down “The Mighty Swoard of Justice” on the heads of “The Perpratators” of both “Grave Injustices”.
1a.) The participants in “The Lawfare Hoax” are about to have “The Mighty Arm of The Law” in the form of “The Feared By All Dook 4 Brains Leftys”, Pam Bondy, come crashing down on their heads in The Sage Trump Administration … so we all see the dropping of charges as “The Rats” scurry off the sinking Demoncratic Ship.
AND:
2a.) The participants in “Jewish massacre and ensueing war on The Jews [AKA “GOD’S CHILDERN”] are about to have “The Mighty Arm of The Trump Military and Economic Sanctions” in the form Trump’s military and Sage Business Wisdom which is “Feared By All Dook 4 Brains Demonic Terrosits” come crashing down on their “Fool Heads in The Sage Trump Administration … so we all see the “Willingness To Enter Into A Cease-Fire as “The Terroist Rats” suddenly realize that “All The Sand” in “All their Dook Kingdoms” is dangerously on the Precipice of “Being Turned Into Glass”.
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Thank you, Sage Patriots & Dook 4 Brains Leftists,
Earl
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