The Senate voted to confirm Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health Tuesday. The 53-47 vote came along party lines.
Bhattacharya was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, in which more than 900,000 public health and disease experts advocated for a herd immunity approach to managing the COVID-19 epidemic. The letter stood against lockdowns and called for "those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection."
At the time, former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci and other public health experts criticized that proposal as dangerous.
Bhattacharya, a pancreatic surgeon and a health researcher at Johns Hopkins University, claimed he was censored by President Biden's administration for his views during the pandemic.
He has promised to promote the concept of scientific dissent in his leadership of NIH. Scientists should be permitted to disagree, he says, even when scientific evidence is already established.
He calls this approach "free speech in science."
“Over the last few years, top NIH officials oversaw a culture of cover-up, obfuscation and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differ from theirs,” Bhattacharya said during his Senate confirmation hearing. “Dissent is the very essence of science.”
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“The NIH needs a leader that will restore Americans’ trust in public health institutions and find unbiased solutions to Americans’ most challenging health problems,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. “Dr. Bhattacharya is ready to take on this responsibility and implement President Trump’s vision to Make America Healthy Again.”
