The US Senate confirmed the appointment of Indian-origin Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford School of Medicine, as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Bhattacharya won the vote 53-47 during the first session of the roll call vote in the 119th Congress. He is a professor of health policy at Stanford University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Hoover Institution.
Uncertainties looms at large at the NIH which has a $48 billion budget and funds medical research on diseases like cancer and diabetes is experiencing lay off and it may get adversely affected as the Trump administration moves to block key parts of its grant-making process and scrap some grants outright.
According to a report by New York Times, Dr. Bhattacharya, a health economist and professor of medicine at Stanford, largely dodged questions about those decisions at a confirmation hearing in early March.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s Life
- Jay Bhattacharya was born in Kolkata in 1968.
- Dr Bhattacharya earned a doctorate in medicine from Stanford in 1997. He also earned a Ph.D in economics from the same university three years later.
- Dr Bhattacharya is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. He directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.
- His research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programmes, biomedical innovation and economics.
- He has published 135 articles in top peer-reviewed scientific journals in medicine, economics, health policy, epidemiology, statistics, law and public health, among other fields.
Controversial scientific takes
In 2020, Bhattacharya was among the authors of an anti-lockdown treatise, the Great Barrington Declaration and he entered the limelight because of controversial takes on the COVID-19 infection. His manifesto argued for protecting older and more vulnerable people from Covid while letting the virus spread among younger, healthier people.
Recently, Dr. Bhattacharya said that he supported children’s inoculation against diseases like measles, “but also that scientists should conduct more research on autism and vaccines, a position at odds with extensive evidence showing no link between the two,” New York Times reported.
In the controversial manifesto, the authors argued hat this spread could thus help in developing natural immunity, while prevention efforts were targeted to older people and the vulnerable.
Moreover, Dr. Bhattacharya presented his views to Alex M. Azar II who was Trump’s health secretary. However, various public health experts condemned him for his views. Dr. Bhattacharya and his fellow authors were promptly dismissed as cranks whose “fringe” policy prescriptions would lead to millions of unnecessary deaths.
Interestingly, he was also became a preferred witness in court cases challenging federal and state Covid policies. He also joined a group of plaintiffs in suing the Biden administration over what he called “Covid censorship.”
What are Jay Bhattacharya’s plans for NIH?
During his confirmation hearing before the members of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee March 5, Bhattacharya listed his five primary goals at NIH, The Cancer Letter reported:
- Chronic disease
- Reliability
- Scientific dissent
- Innovation
- Regulation of gain-of-function research