Jay Bhattacharya is officially the new NIH director.
The Senate voted to confirm the Stanford University professor’s appointment on March 26 in a 53–47 vote. Marty Makary was also confirmed as FDA commissioner in the same hearing in a 56–44 vote.
The appointments come as additional “healthcare disruptors,” alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation as HHS secretary and Mehmet Oz’s nomination as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The nominees have faced backlash from the medical community following their controversial stances on topics like vaccinations and alternative medical practices.
“Dissent is the very essence of science. I will foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists—including early-career scientists—can express disagreement respectfully,” Bhattacharya said during his March 5 hearing.
Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford and also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He faced controversy in 2020 when he co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized Covid-19 lockdown practices and called for allowing the virus to spread to attain herd immunity. He also joined a panel in Florida against mask mandates during the peak of the pandemic.
So far, he has come out in favor of vaccines during his Senate confirmation hearings, in contrast to the history of his now-boss Kennedy’s statements on the issue. Bhattacharya has also pledged to tackle chronic disease in the role by expanding research and finding the causes of conditions.
Bhattacharya replaces Monica Bertagnolli, the first surgeon in the role and former director of the National Cancer Institute. Bertagnolli stepped down before President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 17, making her one of many who left top federal health agencies after the election.
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Bhattacharya also enters NIH amid controversial funding cuts, which have sent shock waves and fear through universities, hospitals, and other institutions that depend on that money to fund medical innovations. While courts ordered a pause in the cuts on March 5, Stat reported that the Trump administration is defying those orders and has also paused the patent process, potentially slowing the release of new drugs.
In the hearings, Bhattacharya reportedly said he would try to ensure researchers had enough grant money, but wasn’t clear on how.
Makary is a pancreatic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine, and also came out against mask mandates in 2021. He replaces Robert Califf, who served in the role for about three years and stepped down when Trump took office.
“When Bhattacharya affirms he will ‘carry out President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s agenda,’ he is committing to a regime based on deception and the goals of an extremist and anti-science minority,” Kenneth Goodman, director of the University of Miami Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, told Healthcare Brew in an email, further calling Bhattacharya’s appointment “dangerous and dispiriting.”
“It is no longer a surprise that the public health analog of flat-earth kookiness frames herd immunity as a credible stance and then pledges to support such silliness as embracing scientific dissent. This is intellectual dishonesty on stilts,” he added.
The NIH didn’t immediately respond, and the FDA denied requests for comment.
Not all of Trump’s nominations have moved forward for congressional approval. On March 13, the Trump administration withdrew its pick for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, former Florida Congressman David Weldon, allegedly after learning he didn’t have enough GOP votes to be confirmed, according to reporting from the Associated Press.