Another COVID-19 critic has joined Donald Trump’s incoming health team, with the president-elect on Tuesday announcing that he has chosen Standford University professor Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health.
As NIH head, Bhattacharya will “direct the Nation’s Medical Research” to “make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives,” Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social.
“Together, Jay and [Robert F. Kennedy 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,” Trump added.
In an X post on Tuesday evening, Bhattacharya said that he is “honored and humbled” by Trump’s nomination.
Currently, Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Bhattacharya also leads the Stanford Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Bhattacharya gained widespread notoriety during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he became known as a vocal and fierce critic of social distancing policies. He was one of the three authors of the controversial Great Barrington Declaration, which called for a return to normal activities for everyone but the medically vulnerable and claimed that COVID-related restrictions did more harm than good.
Instead, the open letter advocated for herd immunity through infection (it was released in October 2020, a few months before vaccines were rolled out). “As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls,” according to the declaration. “Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.”
The Great Barrington Declaration has since gained more than 940,000 signatures from infectious disease and public health specialists all over the world.
Also on Tuesday, Trump announced on Trump Social his pick of Jim O’Neill as deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. O’Neill is a biotech investor who, STAT News reports, was a leader at billionaire Peter Thiel’s investment firm Mithril Capital Management, where vice president–elect JD Vance also worked.
With the Bhattacharya and O’Neill picks, Trump adds to the controversial figures in his incoming health cabinet. Earlier this month, Trump named prominent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the head of HHS. If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy will work closely with celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who is in line as the next Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, and Marty Makary, who is set to serve as commissioner of the FDA.
Last week, Trump announced that he has tapped former Florida congressman and yet another anti-vaccine proponent, Dave Weldon, to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
