US President-elect Donald Trump has picked Indian-American scientist Jay Bhattacharya as the director of the National Institutes of Health, the country’s top health research and funding institutions.
With this, Bhattacharya becomes the first Indian-American to be nominated by Trump for a top administrative position.
Earlier, Trump picked Indian-American Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency along with Tesla owner Elon Musk. However, that is a voluntary position and does not need confirmation from the US Senate.
“I am thrilled to nominate Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bhattacharya will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to direct the Nation’s Medical Research and to make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives,” Trump said.
“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. Together, they will work hard to Make America Healthy Again,” he said.
Bhattacharya, who was born in Kolkata, got his medical degree from Stanford University in 1997 and later earned a PhD. in Economics at the university in 2000. Just weeks after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Bhattacharya co-authored an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal questioning the severity of the virus.
Bhattacharya was one of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 open letter maintaining that lockdowns were causing irreparable harm.
The document — which came before the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and during the first Trump administration — promoted “herd immunity,” the idea that people at low risk should live normally while building up immunity to COVID-19 through infection. Protection should focus instead on people at higher risk, the document said.
