President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he plans to nominate Jay Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes. Photo courtesy National Institutes of Health
Nov. 26 (UPI) -- President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday evening that he has tapped Jay Bhattacharya, an ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a prominent critic of COVID-19 lockdowns, to serve as the director of the National Institutes of Health.
"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," Trump said in a statement.
Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford University who, like many of Trump's health-related nominees, gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic by questioning the government's measures.
He is one of three authors of the The Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for allowing the virus to spread among "those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus."
The declaration was published in October 2020, as cases and deaths were climbing and about to skyrocket, nearly a year before the first COVID-19 vaccine would be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
It received pushback from the established medical community, with then-NIH Director Francis Collins describing the authors of the declaration "fringe epidemiologists."
"I am honored and humbled by President @realDonaldTrump's nomination of me to be the next @NIH director," he said on X. "We will reform American scientific institutions so that they are worthy of trust again and will deploy the fruits of excellent science to make America healthy again!"
If confirmed by the Senate, Bhattacharya will head the United States leading medical research agency. With a budget of $48 billion annually, the NIH is tasked with gaining knowledge to improve and save the lives of Americans.
He will likely work with Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic and known promoter of conspiracies, whom Trump nominated to serve as the secretary of Health and Human Services.
Bhattacharya's nomination, like that of Kennedy, is expected to draw criticism from the established medical community but signals that Trump is seeking to upend the government's health institutes.
Kennedy, in a statement of Tuesday night, described Bhattacharya's nomination as "spectacular" while expressing gratitude to Trump for making it.
"Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is the ideal leader to restore NIH as the international template for gold-standard science and evidence-based medicine," Kennedy said on X.
Along with Bhattacharya, Trump also picked Jim O'Neil to be the deputy secretary of Health and Human Services.
