President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, answered questions in his Senate committee confirmation hearing March 5. When asked about his plans for the future, he promised to “establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the agency.”
This came after he told senators the NIH “oversaw a culture of coverup, obfuscation, and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs” over the last few years.
Bhattacharya is a Stanford professor of medicine and economics. He is best known for his controversial views regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, which clashed with the beliefs of the NIH and other public health officials. Bhattacharya was a vocal critic of the COVID-19 lockdowns. As one of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, he advocated for the United States to strive for “COVID herd immunity” through mass infection, a tactic other medical experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former White House medical adviser and ex-director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, believed was dangerous.
Since Republicans have control of the Senate, many expect Bhattacarya to easily win confirmation. However, critics and Democrats have reservations, noting that while he is a physician, Bhattacharya’s expertise lies more in economics than health. Their skepticism follows the Trump administration’s actions, which froze funding for the NIH, the largest funder of biomedical research in the U.S. According to NPR, the freeze occurred because the Trump administration blocked the NIH from posting any new notices in the Federal Register, a prerequisite to holding federal meetings. This stalled about 16,000 grant applications asking for around $1.5 billion.
According to NPR, the NIH funds almost $48 billion in scientific research through nearly 50,000 grants to more than 300,000 researchers at over 2,500 universities, medical schools and other institutions. The NIH has lost about 1,200 of the agency’s 18,000 employees so far. The Trump administration is also attempting to cap the rate at which the NIH pays for the indirect costs of doing medical research at 15%, which is far lower than the rate paid at many institutions.
Some worry about the mixed effects of funding cuts and Bhattacharya’s new position as he works with Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, on public health and medical research. On the other hand, supporters believe Bhattacharya’s experience as a research professor will help him change the NIH for the better.
“If confirmed, I will carry out President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again and committing the NIH to address the dire chronic health needs of the country with gold-standard science and innovation,” Bhattacharya said.
