President-elect Trump tapped Professor Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., of Stanford University, to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The announcement was made on Tuesday by the transition team.
During the pandemic, Bhattacharya expressed criticism of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates. “Bhattacharya became the face… of a fiercely contested open letter, known as the Great Barrington Declaration – who opposed widespread blockades”, bbc previously reported.
Rachel Cohrs Zhang reported for STATISTICS that if confirmed by the Senate, Bhattacharya would be in charge of implementing the incoming Trump administration’s goals to reform the agency. “The National Institutes of Health is a nearly $48 billion agency that spends much of its resources funding tens of thousands of research grants. But some of Bhattacharya’s own medical research has sparked controversy in the medical community.”
Zhang added that Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has suggested replacing hundreds of NIH employees.
“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a gold standard in medical research while examining the underlying causes and solutions to America’s greatest health challenges, including our chronic disease crisis,” Trump said in a statement.
Bhattacharya posted the following on X statement: “We will reform America’s scientific institutions to make them trustworthy again and deploy the fruits of excellent science to make America healthy again!”
