President-elect Donald Trump has indicated his intention to nominate Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a health policy expert and economist from Stanford University, to lead the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya, an outspoken critic of COVID-19 lockdowns, will assume the largest biomedical research organization in the nation, with a budget of $47.7 billion and 27 institutes and centers, if confirmed by the Senate.
This nomination is part of Trump’s broader health policy team, which also includes a vocal vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Both appointments require Senate approval.
In his statement, Trump highlighted that Bhattacharya and Kennedy would work together to restore the NIH to its Gold Standard of Medical Research, with a focus on addressing critical health issues such as chronic illness and disease. The president-elect framed their cooperation as part of his famous Make America Healthy Again initiative.
Dr. Bhattacharya became very famous after co-authoring the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, which was an extremely controversial document that opposed the widespread lockdown and advocated the protection of vulnerable populations while letting the younger and healthier develop natural immunity to COVID-19. Proponents argued that this could foster herd immunity and decrease long-term infection rates. However, it sparked sharp criticism from many experts in public health, one of whom was former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins who dismissed it as “a fringe component of epidemiology.”
Bhattacharya’s opinions about the pandemic have been very controversial. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in March 2020, he predicted that the United States would experience a death toll of 20,000 to 40,000 from COVID-19. More than 1.2 million American deaths have been attributed to the virus since his predictions.
COVID-19
Besides his research related to COVID-19, Bhattacharya is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and he serves as a senior fellow in various key institutes at Stanford. In addition, he heads the Stanford Center for Demography and the Economics of Health and Aging.
Bhattacharya expressed his gratitude for the nomination, calling it “an honor and a privilege,” and pledged to reform American scientific institutions to restore public trust, emphasizing that “excellent science” would be used to advance U.S. public health.
He has also selected Jim O’Neill as deputy secretary of HHS. O’Neill, who previously held a senior role at the department, is expected to further complement the president-elect’s health policy agenda.
