President-elect Donald Trump has formally nominated Jay Bhattacharya, an economist and physician with training from Stanford, to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“I am thrilled to nominate Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. Dr. Bhattacharya and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will collaborate to guide the country’s medical research and produce significant findings that will enhance health and save lives.
The Washington Post reports that Bhattacharya met with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week, who was nominated by Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which is in charge of the NIH and other health agencies. Bhattacharya impressed the former presidential candidate with his plans to restructure the NIH, which is in charge of U.S. biomedical research.
In addition, the NIH manages clinical trials on its site in Maryland, provides financing grants to hundreds of thousands of researchers, and supports other initiatives aimed at creating medications and treatments.
The Senate, which will have a Republican majority starting in January, must confirm the NIH director nomination.
Bhattacharya has advocated for reducing the power of some of the NIH’s most senior officials and shifting the organization’s emphasis towards supporting more creative research.
According to the report, Kennedy Jr. has been instrumental in selecting top medical personnel and deputies for Trump’s next administration, such as internal medicine specialist and former Florida Republican congressman Dave Weldon, who Trump appointed to head the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary, whom Trump appointed to head the Food and Drug Administration.
According to the article, Bhattacharya and Makary collaborated to draft a plan for a committee that would look into the country’s response to the coronavirus.
The Senate must also confirm Trump’s choices of Makary, Weldon, and Janette Nesheiwat, a family and emergency medicine doctor who was the president-elect’s nominee for surgeon general.
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In the early stages of the epidemic, Bhattacharya was a vocal opponent of the federal government’s COVID-19 response. In October 2020, during Trump’s first term, he co-authored an open letter urging the government to rescind pandemic shutdowns while preserving “focused protections” for vulnerable groups, like the elderly.
Republican politicians and many Americans who opposed shutdowns and desired a restoration to life as it was before the pandemic backed the proposal.
Public health specialists, such as Francis S. Collins, the director of the NIH at the time, criticised the plan as being unsafe and premature given the COVID-19 outbreak at a time when vaccinations were not yet available.
Asserting that certain career public workers misguided national policy during the height of the pandemic and suppressed opposing viewpoints, Bhattacharya has also asked for the revocation of some of the 27 institutes and centres that comprise the NIH.