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 Health, the nation’s main medical analysis company.
Trump, in a press release Tuesday night, stated Bhattacharya, a 56-year-old doctor and professor at Stanford College College of Drugs, will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his decide to steer the Division of Health and Human Providers, “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 choice to decide on Bhattacharya for the put up is yet one more reminder of the continuing affect of the COVID pandemic on the politics on public well being.
Bhattacharya was considered one of three authors of the Nice Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 open letter sustaining that lockdowns have been inflicting irreparable hurt.
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The doc — which got here earlier than the provision of COVID-19 vaccines and throughout the first Trump administration — promoted “herd immunity,” the concept folks at low threat ought to reside usually whereas increase immunity to COVID-19 by an infection. Safety ought to focus as a substitute on folks at increased threat, the doc stated.
“I think the lockdowns were the single biggest public health mistake,” Bhattacharya stated 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 extensively denounced by illness specialists. Then- NIH director Dr. Francis Collins referred to as it harmful and “not mainstream science.”
His nomination would have to be authorized 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 stated O’Neill “will oversee all operations and improve Management, Transparency, and Accountability to, Make America Healthy Again,” the president-elect introduced.
O’Neill is the one considered one of Trump’s well being picks up to now who brings earlier expertise working contained in the forms 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 Court docket case contending that federal officers improperly suppressed conservative views on social media as a part of their efforts to fight misinformation. The Supreme Court docket 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 website Bluesky, mocking Bluesky as “their own little echo chamber.”
Bhattacharya has argued that vaccine mandates that barred unvaccinated folks from actions and workplaces undermined Individuals’ belief within the public well being system.
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He’s a former analysis fellow on the Hoover Establishment and an economist on the RAND Company.
The Nationwide Institutes of Health falls below HHS, which Trump has nominated Kennedy to supervise. The NIH’s $48 billion finances funds medical analysis on vaccines, most cancers and different ailments by 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 have been supported by NIH cash are a drugs for opioid habit, a vaccine to stop cervical most cancers, many new most cancers medication and the speedy growth of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Related Press writers Jill Colvin and Amanda Seitz contributed to this report.
