President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as the new director of the National Institute of Health (NIH).
“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will work to return the National Institutes of Health to the gold standard of medical research as they study the underlying causes and solutions to America’s greatest health challenges, including the chronic disease crisis,” Trump wrote in a statement announcing the new appointment. . And together, they will work hard to make America healthy again!”
Bhattacharya, a health researcher at Stanford University, was widely known for opposing lockdowns when the Covid-19 virus emerged in the United States, according to NPR.
He co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an open declaration opposing widespread lockdowns and demanding focused protection for vulnerable groups such as the elderly.
His nomination requires Senate approval, and if he receives it, he will take charge of an institution that employs more than 18,000 workers and funds nearly $48 billion in scientific research through more than 50,000 grants to more than 300,000 researchers in more than 2,500 educational institutions.
It is clear that Bhattacharya will have great power and can influence the future of medical science. Many public health experts have denounced his nomination, including Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.
“I don’t think Jay Bhattacharya belongs anywhere near the National Institutes of Health, let alone in the director’s office,” she said.
“It would be absolutely disastrous for the health and well-being of the American public and indeed the world,” she added.
The National Institutes of Health is also under threat from Trump because during his first term in the White House he proposed cutting the agency’s budget. It has also come under intense opposition during the COVID-19 pandemic from some Republicans toward long-serving NIH officials such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, who was NIH director from 2009 to 2021.