WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he has named a Stanford University health policy professor and skeptic of COVID-19 precautions to head the National Institutes of Health, the sweeping federal agency tasked with overseeing many of the largest to solve the country’s health challenges.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya needs Senate confirmation before officially taking over. But assuming he can secure the vote next year, when the chamber is controlled by Republicans, he will have significant influence over how the federal government spends billions in research money.
“Dr. Bhattacharya will work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the nation’s medical research and make significant discoveries that will improve health and save lives,” Trump wrote in the announcement. Kennedy belongs to Trump Choose to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Bhattacharya posted on social media that he was “honored and humbled” by the nomination and pledged to “reform American scientific institutions so that they can be trusted again and use the fruits of excellent science to make America healthy again!”
In addition to Kennedy, Trump’s nominees for health-related positions include former TV personality and former Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, former Florida Congressman Dave Weldon run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Marty Makary as Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and Fox News medical contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, the next surgeon general.
“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will return the NIH to a gold standard of medical research by investigating the underlying causes and solutions to America’s greatest health challenges, including our chronic disease crisis,” Trump wrote in his announcement.
Health Economist
Bhattacharya received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in 1990 before receiving his medical degree from the School of Medicine in 1997 and a Ph.D. acquired. in 2000 from the University’s Department of Economics.
He focuses his research on health economics and outcomes the course of his lifethe academic version of a resume.
Bhattacharyas biography Stanford’s website states that in addition to being a professor of health policy, he directs the Center for the Demographics and Economics of Health and Aging and also works as a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research.
“Dr. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation and economics,” the bio says.
His research areas include the “epidemiology of COVID-19 and an assessment of policy responses to the epidemic.”
“A peripheral component”
Bhattacharya stated before the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee Special Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in February 2023 that, in his opinion, there is “near universal agreement that what we have done has failed.”
“Official counts put more than 1 million deaths in the United States and 7 million worldwide,” he said.
Bhattacharya was one of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, arguing that younger, hearty people should have lived their normal lives if they tried to contract COVID-19 because they were slightly less likely to die than vulnerable population groups.
The brief statement says that “implementing measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central goal of the public health response to COVID-19.” But it does not list what those measures should include and never mandates masks , physical distancing or vaccination mentioned.
Several public health officials and researchers rejected the statement, noting that it did not cite research, data or peer-reviewed articles.
Former NIH Director Francis S. Collins, who led the agency from 2009 to 2021, said The Washington Post in October 2020 that the beliefs of the authors of the Barrington Declaration were not held “by a large number of experts in the scientific community.”
“This is a peripheral component of epidemiology. This is not mainstream science. It’s dangerous. It fits the political views of certain parts of our confused political establishment,” Collins said in the Post interview. “I’m sure it will be an idea that someone can use as justification for foregoing mask-wearing or social distancing and just doing whatever they damn well please.”
One of the many reasons public health experts recommended masking, home working and physical distancing before the rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine was to prevent patients from overwhelming the country’s health care system.
During some spikes in COVID-19 infections, there were concerns that there would be so many unwell people in the country at one time that there would not be enough space, medical professionals or equipment to treat them.
Extensive agency
The NIH consists of 27 different centers and institutes each focusing on the health challenges facing Americans.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, formerly headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci became one of the more prominent institutes during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when he regularly appeared alongside Trump at press conferences.
Other components of the NIH include the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the NIH Clinical Center, also known as America’s Research Hospital.
Congress approved $48 billion in discretionary spending for the NIH in the last fiscal year, continuing a largely bipartisan push that has for years given the agency more funding to provide grants for research into some of the most challenging diseases and illnesses, that Americans face.
Current NIH Director, Monica M. Bertagnolli, testified before Congress In early November, on how the agency is working to restore trust in the wake of the pandemic.
Bertagnolli told lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives that the NIH focuses some of its research on finding cures for infrequent diseases because for-profit companies often don’t have the financial incentive to do so.
She also rejected the notion that NIH leadership had allowed politics to interfere with the agency’s mission.
“The NIH focuses primarily on science, not policy,” Bertagnolli said. “We actually have an integrity mandate against political interference in our work. For us, that is the law and we strictly adhere to it.”
Last updated on November 27, 2024, 10:53 am
