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Stanford University professor and Covid-19 lockdown skeptic Jay Bhattacharya has emerged as the frontrunner at the National Institutes of Health, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The appointment of Bhattacharya, who rose to prominence during the pandemic for opposing lockdown restrictions, would put another ally of Robert Kennedy Jr., the vaccine skeptic picked by Trump to lead the US Department of Health, in charge about one of the most powerful public opinions in the country. health institutions.
With an annual budget of $48 billion, NIH is the largest publicly funded biomedical research agency in the world, providing more than 60,000 grants annually to support medical and scientific research.
Senior officials within Trump’s transition team have spoken in recent days with Bhattacharya, who directs Stanford’s Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, the people said.
The choice for NIH director will likely be announced in the coming days, but plans could change and another candidate could emerge, the people added.
Representatives of Trump and Kennedy’s transition team did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Bhattacharya was also unavailable for comment.
Late Friday, Trump’s transition team announced a series of high-profile nominations, including Treasury secretary, Labor secretary and three key health official picks.
Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon who opposed the Covid-19 vaccine mandate, was nominated to lead the Food and Drug Administration. Physician and former GOP congressman Dave Weldon, who has raised doubts about vaccine safety, was tapped to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Bhattacharya appeared alongside Kennedy at a campaign event during his independent campaign for president, where he unveiled his running mate Nicole Shanahan.
Since endorsing Trump’s presidency in August, Kennedy has gained significant influence over the president’s health care policy agenda as part of his “Make American Healthy Again” campaign. Trump’s pick for Fox News medical contributor Janette Nesheiwat was the only one among health officials not close to Kennedy so far, the people added.
Along with two other professors, during the pandemic Bhattacharya became the face of the ‘Great Barrington Declaration’, an open letter published in October 2020 opposing large-scale lockdowns and instead calling for restrictions targeting at-risk groups such as the elderly . The letter provoked criticism from then-NIH director Francis Collins, who dismissed the authors as “fringe experts.”
Much of Bhattacharya’s public criticism of the NIH has focused on the way Collins and Anthony Fauci — former director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the NIH — responded to the pandemic.
Bhattacharya told the Financial Times this month that he supported term limits for NIH directors. “I think there is too much concentration of power in the hands of too few people: there should not be another Tony Fauci,” he said.
Kennedy’s appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services has alarmed the pharmaceutical industry and public health agencies because of his skeptical views on vaccines, his stated goal of eliminating “entire departments” within the FDA and his plans to remove fluoride from drinking water. However, Kennedy has pledged not to restrict access to vaccines.
In an article on the digital media site UnHerd published last week, Bhattacharya brushed aside concerns about some of Kennedy’s debunked claims, saying: “Kennedy is not a scientist, but his good-faith calls for better research and more debate are being met by many Americans repeated. ”
He added that “the American public voted for disruptors like RFK Jr in 2024, and academic medicine now has an opportunity to atone for its Covid-era blunders.”