Stanford Physician and Fauci Critic Jay Bhattacharya Among Contenders to Head National Institutes of Health

President-elect Trump is considering appointing Stanford physician and economist Jay Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH. The Washington Post reports that the Indian American is “a strong candidate to lead the nearly $50 billion agency in the coming Trump administration, with his name on an internal list of contenders being compiled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is nominated to run the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH.

Bhattacharya is one of the authors of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which was an open letter signed by thousands of doctors and scientists in 2020 denouncing lockdowns as harmful. He was joined by Harvard professor of medicine Dr. Martin Kulldorff and Oxford professor Dr. Sunetra Gupta in co-authoring the document. The declaration was quickly denounced by other health leaders, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci, who slammed the call for herd immunity in the document as “nonsense and very dangerous,” The New York Post reported at the time. 

In a statement sent to The Post, supporting Bhattacharya’s appointment, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, (R-Ohio), chairman of the House panel investigating the coronavirus response, said Bhattacharya is “respected within the medical community and would ensure that public health returns to science-based solutions — not bureaucratic failed practices.”

The Washington Post notes that “the rise of Bhattacharya — from being scorned by the nation’s NIH director to possibly occupying his office four years later — reflects how the backlash to coronavirus policies has helped reshape conservative politics and elevate new voices.” He has often described himself as a victim of what felt like a “propaganda attack” led by public health experts after the Great Barrington Declaration. However, despite the criticism the Great Barrington Declaration received, The Post points out that “many Americans have come to believe that school shutdowns and other pandemic-related policies lasted too long.”

Since the pandemic, Bhattacharya has testified in Congress, met with lawmakers in both parties and offered advice to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and other leaders navigating the pandemic. He also got support from Trump allies like Kennedy, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel. Musk has criticized Bhattacharya’s suppression by Twitter executives before Musk bought the social media service and overhauled it. Bhattacharya was placed on a “Trends Blacklist,” complied by journalist Bari Weiss.

Speaking to Fox News host Laura Ingram the same day the “Twitter Files” were released, Bhattacharya said the social media platform went “too far” with its “censorship.” He said that if there was an “open scientific discussion,” lockdowns could be lifted much easier. He accused Twitter of harming science, children and the American public, and his civil rights. “It is a direct violation of the First Amendment and every American should be outraged.” Had he been given a platform to put forth his views, Bhattacharya told Ingram that the scenario could’ve been entirely different. “All the small businesses could’ve stayed open, all the kids that wouldn’t have to be depressed and suicidal, all the learning loss that could’ve been avoided.” 

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At a Nov. 15 event hosted by the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government, Bhattacharya highlighted what he believed to be the most important mistake of the COVID outbreak: not allowing people to speak to each other, according to a university press release. He “hypothesized the COVID virus was more widespread during the beginning of the outbreak than widely perceived by the public,” the press release said. The event titled “The End of Free Speech is the End of Science,” was co-sponsored by the university’s College of Science. 

Aside from providing data to support the inevitability of a coronavirus outbreak, Bhattacharya also discussed how well-known groups such as the World Health Organization (WHO) instigated widespread fear over the virus.  “The impression that the world got was that 3 or 4 out of 100 people who got the disease were going to die from it. I knew that was not true,” Bhattacharya explained. “We were spreading undue fear about the disease in the population by telling them a very misleading number.”

A professor of Health Policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, Bhattacharya He Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. His research focuses on the epidemiology of COVID-19 as well as an evaluation of policy responses to the epidemic. His broader research interests encompass the implications of population aging for future population health and medical spending in developed countries, the measurement of physician performance tied to physician payment by insurers, and the role played by biomedical innovation on health. 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. He holds an M.D. and Ph.D. in economics, both earned at Stanford University.