Stanford physician and economist Jay Bhattacharya, who former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins labeled as a "fringe" expert for co-authoring an open letter opposing pandemic lockdowns in October 2020, is now a strong contender to lead the agency.
Bhattacharya's name is on an internal list of contenders for top government health roles being compiled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump's pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, according to four sources speaking on the condition of anonymity, reported The Washington Post Saturday.
In their letter known as the Great Barrington Declaration, Bhattacharya and his co-authors, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, and Dr. Sunetra Gupta, a professor at Oxford University, called for a "Focused Protection" method of dealing with the pandemic that would "allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk."
Collins privately dismissed them as "fringe" experts and called for a "take down" of their suggestions, emails released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal.
Collins and other public health experts have continued to insist that the declaration's ideas were too rash, but many Americans since the pandemic have come to believe that shutdowns and other policies lasted too long.
Bhattacharya says he feels that public health experts launched a "propaganda attack" against him, but his conservative supporters say he was right with his opinions when compared with government officials.
"He is respected within the medical community and would ensure that public health returns to science-based solutions — not bureaucratic failed practices," Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, who chairs the House panel investigating the COVID-19 response, said in a statement about a potential government health role for Bhattacharya.
While Bhattacharya is backed by many of Trump's supporters and conservative power players, many public health professionals have pushed back at him.
Mallory Harris, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland who received her Ph.D. in biology from Stanford this year has led a Stanford student group focused on combating scientific misinformation.
She said in an interview that she thinks Bhattacharya's supporters are pushing policies to favor business interests, not public health, and she opposes his candidacy for a government role.
"I think his decision-making can be called into question," said Harris.
The Trump team has not commented on a potential role for Bhattacharya.
"President-elect Trump is making decisions on who will serve in his second administration. Those decisions will be announced when they are made," spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Bhattacharya holds a medical degree and Ph.D. from Stanford but has never held a senior government position or any role in overseeing a large organization like the NIH.
Kennedy and his allies, though, say that is a good thing, as they want to bring in people who are willing to fight bureaucracy.
Even before the pandemic, Bhattacharya had long called for changes to NIH and other government agencies, but now, he said his experience during the pandemic shows the agency stifles dissent.
He also argues that certain NIH officials have too much power, specifically Dr. Anthony Fauci, director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years.
Bhattacharya said in an interview earlier this year that he would restructure the agency so there would be more centers of power, not a "small number of scientific bureaucrats" who dominate "for a very long time."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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