Who is Kolkata-born Jay Bhattacharya, Donald Trump's pick to lead US health agency?
US President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday picked Stanford academic and US Covid policy critic Jay Bhattacharya as the Director of the National Institutes of Health.
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FollowJay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor and US Covid-19 policy opponent, was appointed by President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday to lead the National Institutes of Health, the nation's largest public provider of medical research funding, with a $47.3 billion budget. The NIH has been in the crosshairs of Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH. The head of the NIH is in charge of 27 institutes and centers that carry out early-stage research on anything from potential drug targets to vaccinations for new pandemic risks.
"I am delighted to propose Jay Bhattacharya, Md, PhD, to be the Director of the National Institutes of Health," Trump said in a statement. "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," he added.
Bhattacharya said in an X post that this group will "reform American scientific institutions" in order to restore national health. "I am humbled and pleased to have been nominated by President Donald Trump to be the next head of the National Institutes of Health. We will restructure American scientific establishments to regain their credibility and use the results of outstanding research to restore America's health," he stated.
Who is Jay Bhattacharya?
Jayanta "Jay" Bhattacharya, a Stanford health policy professor and physician who was born in Kolkata in 1968, was a vocal opponent of the US government's COVID-19 policies during the epidemic. Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration with two other scholars, advocating for people who were not susceptible to the virus to resume their usual lives.
Later, he filed a lawsuit against the government, claiming that it had coerced social media companies to filter his views. According to his résumé, Bhattacharya earned his PhD from Stanford's Department of Economics in 2000 after graduating from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1997.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease who served on President Trump's coronavirus task force, became a frequent target of Republicans for contradicting some of Trump's coronavirus policies and recommendations, leading to calls for his dismissal.
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