Dr. Jay Batacharya, a health economist at Stanford University, who stands out against lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic, faced questions from the Senate Health Committee to direct the National Institutes of Health as a candidate for President Trump.
With a $48 billion budget and 27 independent laboratories and centers, the agency, the world's largest biomedical research funder, has recently been rocking due to the Trump administration's efforts to block government spending and reduce the federal workforce. Hours before Wednesday's hearing, the government's Efficiency Bureau, a cost-cutting group led by Elon Musk, trumpeted the cancellation of the NIH grant.
Dr. Bhatacharya, a medical degree and professor of medicine but has never practiced it, expressed his interest in reorganizing agencies and reducing the power of “scientific bureaucrats.”
His views on medicine and public health can be at odds with many scientists who Dr. Bhattacharya oversees the NIH.
He defended the vaccine and said he suspected it caused autism, but Dr. Bhatacharya told an interviewer last year that he could not rule out Link. “I don't know the facts,” he said. Extensive evidence indicates that there is no relationship between vaccination and autism.
Dr. Bhattacharya has become a go-to witness in courts challenging Covid policies, including Mask Mandates. In some cases, the judge said he ignored the facts or was unreliable. His detractors have published research on health policy issues such as drug prices and the link between different types of health insurance and HIV death, but he notes that he is not a scientist doing biomedical research, a core mission of the agency.
However, supporters say Dr. Bhatacharya brought the necessary reforms to the NIH and defended some of his opposite views on Covid.
Dr. Bhatacharya entered the news in October 2020 at the height of the pandemic. He is an anti-lockdown paper, the great Barrington Declaration that advocated “focused protection,” a strategy focused on spreading the virus among young, healthy people.
National medical leaders, including Dr. Francis S. Collins and then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony S. Fauko, who was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, denounced the plan. Calling Dr. Bhatacharya and his co-authors “fringe epidemiologists,” Dr. Collins wrote in an email that “a quick and devastating takedown of the facility is needed.”
Dr. Collins, who later resigned as NIH director to pursue his laboratory research, retired last week in anticipation of Dr. Batacharya's arrival.
