Bhattacharya Tapped For Top Job at NIH

As expected, President-elect Donald Trump has picked Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., to be the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Bhattacharya, 56, a health economist and professor of medicine at Stanford, became well known as one of the three authors of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration that argued for using a herd immunity strategy for coping with COVID-19 rather than social distancing and closures.

His selection, which Trump announced yesterday, fills out the roster of the top six healthcare jobs in the new administration. Together, Trump’s picks signal a repudiation of much of the public health response to the COVID-19 and an outsider approach to federal government health policy and programs that, at the very least, will question priorities and, could challenge entrenched interests and longstanding beliefs.

If confirmed by the Senate, Bhattacharya will be in charge of the world’s largest healthcare and medical research organization that comprises 27 separate research institutes and has an annual budget of approximately $50 billion.

Trump’s other healthcare picks include Rober F. Kennedy Jr. for HHS secretary; Mehmet Oz, M.D., for CMS administrator; Dave Weldon, M.D., for CDC director; Mary Makary, M.D., M.P.H., for FDA commissioner and Janette Nesheiwatt, for surgeon general.

Barring recess appointments, all six nominees will need to be confirmed by the Senate, which the Republicans will control next year by a 53-47 margin.

Kennedy is likely to draw the most scrutiny during the nomination process because of his views on vaccine and his leadership, as chairman, of the Children’s Health Defense. Kennedy rejects being labeled as antivaccine but his critics say his questioning of their safety and efficacy amounts to the same thing.

Bhattacharya has been on the faculty of the Stanford University School of Medicine since 2001 and earned his M.D. there in 1997 and a PhD. in economics in 2000 from the prestigious California university, according to the CV posted on his faculty webpage

Bhattacharya has been criticized for taking positions that his critics say downplayed the severity of the pandemic and would have led to more disease and death from the respiratory virus. But as the pandemic receded and the consequences of the lockdowns, mandates and school closures of the public health have gotten more attention, the criticism has softened, Bhattacharya as the overall boss of NIH would be in a position to mainstream his views and further question how the pandemic was dealt with by public health officials, especially during the Biden administration

The Great Barrington declaration, named for the Massachusetts town where the meeting was held where it was drafted, argues for allowing “those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk," such as people who live in nuring homes.

Ashish Jha, M.D., M.P.H., dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and White House COVID-19 response coordinator during the Biden administration, described Bhattacharya and Makary as “pretty reasonable” on X.

“I have plenty of policy disagreements with them. They are smart and experienced. We will need them to do well,” added Jha, who has called Kennedy a terrible choice for HHS secretary.

Lawrence O. Gostin, J.D., a global heath law expert at Georgetown wrote onX that “Jay Bhattacharya is an unwise pick for NIH. He’s combative, often unkind & a scientific iconoclast. The Barrington Declaration caused needless deaths.”