Trump Picks Jay Bhattacharya, Who Backed COVID Herd Immunity, To Lead National Institutes Of Health | EUROtoday

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen well being economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a critic of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, to steer the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s main medical analysis company.

Trump, in a press release Tuesday night, mentioned Bhattacharya, a 56-year-old doctor and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choose to steer the Department of Health and Human Services, “to direct the Nation’s Medical Research, and to make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives.”

“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,” he wrote.

The determination to decide on Bhattacharya for the put up is yet one more reminder of the continued impression of the COVID pandemic on the politics on public well being.

Bhattacharya was one in every of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 open letter sustaining that lockdowns have been inflicting irreparable hurt.

The doc — which got here earlier than the provision of COVID-19 vaccines and through the first Trump administration — promoted “herd immunity,” the concept that folks at low threat ought to reside usually whereas build up immunity to COVID-19 by an infection. Protection ought to focus as a substitute on folks at larger threat, the doc mentioned.

“I think the lockdowns were the single biggest public health mistake,” Bhattacharya mentioned in March 2021 throughout a panel dialogue convened by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The Great Barrington Declaration was embraced by some within the first Trump administration, even because it was broadly denounced by illness specialists. Then- NIH director Dr. Francis Collins referred to as it harmful and “not mainstream science.”

His nomination would should be authorised by the Senate.

Trump on Tuesday additionally introduced that Jim O’Neill, a former HHS official, will function deputy secretary of the sprawling company. Trump mentioned O’Neill “will oversee all operations and improve Management, Transparency, and Accountability to, Make America Healthy Again,” the president-elect introduced.

O’Neill is the one one in every of Trump’s well being picks to this point who brings earlier expertise working contained in the forms to the job. Trump’s earlier decisions to steer public well being companies — together with Kennedy, Dr. Mehmet Oz for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator and Dr. Marty Makary for Food and Drug Administration commissioner — have all been Washington outsiders who’re vowing to shake up the companies.

Bhattacharya, who confronted restrictions on social media platforms due to his views, was additionally a plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri, a Supreme Court case contending that federal officers improperly suppressed conservative views on social media as a part of their efforts to fight misinformation. The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in that case.

After Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he invited Bhattacharya to the corporate’s headquarters to be taught extra about how his views had been restricted on the platform, which Musk renamed X. More just lately, Bhattacharya has posted on X about scientists leaving the positioning and becoming a member of the choice website Bluesky, mocking Bluesky as “their own little echo chamber.”

Bhattacharya has argued that vaccine mandates that barred unvaccinated folks from actions and workplaces undermined Americans’ belief within the public well being system.

He is a former analysis fellow on the Hoover Institution and an economist on the RAND Corporation.

The National Institutes of Health falls below HHS, which Trump has nominated Kennedy to supervise. The NIH’s $48 billion finances funds medical analysis on vaccines, most cancers and different illnesses by aggressive grants to researchers at establishments throughout the nation. The company additionally conducts its personal analysis with hundreds of scientists working at NIH labs in Bethesda, Maryland.

Among advances that have been supported by NIH cash are a medicine for opioid dependancy, a vaccine to forestall cervical most cancers, many new most cancers medication and the speedy improvement of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Amanda Seitz contributed to this report.