US President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Jay Bhattacharya, a key Covid lockdown skeptic, to be the next director of a key US public health agency.
Trump said he had chosen the Stanford University-trained physician and economist to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest government-funded biomedical research agency. is
Bhattacharya became the face during the pandemic of a fiercely controversial open letter – known as the Great Barrington Declaration – opposing the massive lockdown.
Tuesday’s nominations include Trump’s top public health team. He has already unveiled all 15 positions for his cabinet as he prepares to take office on January 20.
Earlier this month, Trump announced that he wanted former rival Robert Kennedy Jr. to run the US Department of Health. Kennedy’s skepticism about vaccines has alarmed the medical community, although his calls for stricter regulation of food ingredients have been applauded.
In a statement, Trump said Bhattacharya, along with Kennedy, “will restore the NIH to the gold standard of medical research as they examine the root causes and solutions to America’s greatest health challenges, including our chronic Illness and the Illness Crisis”.
On Tuesday, the president-elect also named Jim O’Neill — a former federal health official and close ally of conservative donor Peter Thiel — as deputy health secretary.
But it is Bhattacharya who is best known for challenging the public health establishment’s response to the Covid outbreak four years ago.
In October 2020, Bhattacharya wrote an open letter known as the Great Barrington Declaration, calling for an alternative to the lockdown, recommending that it instead protect vulnerable groups such as the elderly. should be paid attention to.
He remains a vocal critic of how Anthony Fauci – the former director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the NIH – handled the pandemic.
K-NIH director Francis Collins at the time said the Great Barrington Declaration, which came before a Covid vaccine was available, was dangerous, dismissing the authors as “fringe experts”.
Bhattacharya is not the only Trump nominee to criticize the response of US public health agencies to the pandemic.
Trump has also chosen Marty Macari, a Johns Hopkins surgeon who opposed the Covid-19 vaccine mandate, to run the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Dave Weldon, a physician and former Republican congressman who has also expressed doubts about vaccine safety, was chosen to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Kennedy and O’Neill’s health departments will oversee all agencies run by Makari, Weldon and Bhattacharya, but all require Senate confirmation.
Last week, Trump also nominated TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
While Trump’s picks for U.S. public health agencies have been widely welcomed by his allies, not all of them have been well received by conservatives.
He also nominated Dr. Janet Nishivat, a Fox News medical contributor, to be the next surgeon general.
Her previous comments opposing abortion restrictions and supporting the veiling of school children during the pandemic have upset some Trump supporters.