President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an outspoken critic of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, to lead the National Institutes of Health.
Trump announced the pick on Tuesday night, saying he is “thrilled to nominate” the Stanford University health policy professor as the next NIH director.
Bhattacharya will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump said, to “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.” Kennedy is the incoming president’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH.
The public health agency is the world’s largest biomedical research entity funded by the government with a budget of some $47.3 billion. NIH consists of 27 separate institutes and centers that research everything ranging from cancer to heart disease.
Bhattacharya was one of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which opposed widespread lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic because of the physical and mental toll the policy took on people. In October 2020, the open letter called for a viable alternative to lockdowns and recommended that the medical establishment should focus on protecting vulnerable groups, such as the elderly.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of NIH at the time, disagreed with the Great Barrington Declaration’s premises and dismissed the authors as “fringe epidemiologists” in an email addressed to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Bhattacharya was also a critic of Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as chief medical adviser to the president during the early years of the pandemic. Fauci retired in late 2022.
Trump’s nomination of the prominent physician completes Trump’s top public health team. Bhattacharya will be joined by vaccine-mandate critic Marty Makary, who will head the Food and Drug Administration, and vaccine-safety skeptic Dave Weldon, who will run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Trump also tapped Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
These nominations will need to be approved by the Republican-controlled Senate.
“I am honored and humbled by President [Donald Trump’s] nomination of me to be the next [NIH] director,” Bhattacharya posted 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!”