Dr. Jay Bhattacharya promised on Wednesday to bring sunlight to the National Institutes of Health if confirmed as the agency’s director.
Speaking before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Bhattacharya rebuked the NIH for its behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, which he said did great damage to trust in scientists and academic institutions. Bhattacharya, an outspoken critic of the COVID lockdowns, was one of the first to express concerns about the safety and efficacy of vaccine mandates.
A professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, Bhattacharya promised to bring greater transparency to the American people about the NIH’s research, which he said had failed in its fundamental mission.
“The mission of the NIH is to address the health needs the American people have and to expand life expectancy of the American people. And we have not achieved that. It’s flatlined,” he said.
This failure, paired with a massive loss in “trust in the public health establishment” during COVID, made clear the need for the NIH to reestablish trust with the American people, Bhattacharya said.
Bhattacharya rose to prominence for his opposition to COVID lockdowns and later his concerns that COVID vaccines posed some health risks, specifically for young men.
“Science should be an engine for freedom. Knowledge and freedom … it shouldn’t be pushing mandates for vaccines like the COVID vaccines,” he said. “The role of the scientist should not be to say that you can’t send your kid to school for two years.”
Reflecting on his experience during the COVID pandemic, Bhattacharya said that he was “tremendously proud” to advise Florida’s response to the pandemic, which sent kids back to schools way earlier than California with little to no negative impact.
Bhattacharya condemned the censorship that was pushed by the Biden administration against critics of the vaccine mandates at the time. He said during the pandemic there was a problem of “censorship and restriction” of science” and that the “root problem was that people who had alternative ideas were suppressed.”
Bhattacharya said that he himself was the victim of pressure campaigns by the Biden administration and that the Freedom of Information Act requests he filed during the pandemic were returned fully redacted.
“You can’t have trust unless you are transparent,” Bhattacharya said, saying that that Americans should be able to “see all of the activities of the NIH openly.”
Other topics discussed during the hearing included proposed cuts to NIH funding of universities and research institutions, as well as vaccines and autism. Moderate Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) pushed Bhattacharya to disavow Trump’s cap on funding for indirect funding, which he said he would evaluate if confirmed.
Bhattacharya would help allocate tens of billions of dollars in funding if confirmed by the Senate.
