Lockdown critic to lead Trump’s health agency
American president-elect Donald Trump has picked a leading sceptic of Covid lockdown to be the next director of a crucial US public health agency. Trump chose Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University trained physician and economist to head the National Institute of Health (NIH), the planet’s biggest government-funded biomedical research body.
Bhattacharya became well-known during the pandemic after a widely disputed open letter, called the Great Barrington Declaration, that was strongly opposed lockdown during the pandemic.
This nomination is the last for Trump’s top public health team. All 15 positions for his cabinet have now been unveiled ahead of his return to the White House on the 20th of January.
Trump had recently announced former rival Robert Kennedy Jr to run the US health department. Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic, has worried the medical community, though he has been praised for his calls for stricter government regulations for food ingredients.
Bhattacharya would work with Kennedy to “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 said in a statement.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Bhattacharya said that he was “humbled” to have been chosen by the president-elect. “We will reform American scientific institutions so that they are worthy of trust again and will deploy the fruits of excellent science to make America healthy again!” he wrote on the platform.
Trump also chose Jim O’Neill to be deputy secretary of the health department. O’Neill is a former federal health official and close ally of conservative donor Peter Theil. But Bhattacharya became more well known after challenging the response to the pandemic, especially the widespread lockdown.
In October 2020, Bhattacharya was the co-author of an open letter that called for an alternative to lockdown, suggesting that the focus should be on protecting the most vulnerable such as the elderly.
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