American President-elect Donald Trump has selected Stanford health-policy professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a prominent critic of pandemic health measures, to head the National Institutes of Health.
The NIH is a $47 billion agency that funds much of the United States’s basic research into the underlying causes of infectious and other diseases.
Bhattacharya, a doctor and economist, became known during the Covid-19 pandemic as a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for ending lockdowns and isolating the vulnerable so that young, healthy people could get infected and build up immunity in the population.
Some, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, criticised the document, saying its approach was flawed and would lead to unnecessary deaths.
Bhattacharya had advocated for overhauling the agency. His proposals include more studies that repeat other studies to increase confidence in science, encouraging academic freedom among NIH scientists, and term limits for NIH leaders.
“Those kinds of reforms, I think every scientist would agree, every American would agree, it’s how you turn the NIH from something that is sort of how to control society, into something that is aimed at the discovery of truth to improve the health of Americans,” he said earlier this month.
The NIH falls under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, the massive health agency that Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr.to lead. Bhattacharya has supported Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.
“Dr. Bhattacharya is a strong choice to lead the NIH,” said Dr. Ned Sharpless, a former National Cancer Institute director. “The support of moderate Senate Republicans will be critical to NIH funding, and Dr. Bhattacharya’s Covid work will give him credibility with this constituency.”