Michael Ejercito
2024-11-27 15:47:13 UTC
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PermalinkTrump picks Covid lockdown critic to lead top health agency
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Getty Images Dr Jay Bhattacharya speaks at the Heritage Foundation on 10
November 2022Getty Images
Dr Jay Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration
US President-elect Donald Trump has picked a leading Covid lockdown
sceptic Jay Bhattacharya to be the next director of a key US public
health agency.
Trump said he had selected the Stanford University-trained physician and
economist to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s
biggest government-funded biomedical research entity.
Bhattacharya became the face during the pandemic of a fiercely disputed
open letter - known as the Great Barrington Declaration - that opposed
widespread lockdowns.
Tuesday's nomination rounds out Trump’s top public health team. He has
already unveiled all 15 posts for his cabinet as he prepares to take
office on 20 January.
Earlier this month Trump announced he wanted former rival Robert Kennedy
Jr to run the US health department. Kennedy’s vaccine scepticism has
alarmed the medical community, though his calls for stricter regulation
of food ingredients have won praise.
In a statement Trump said 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".
Bhattacharya posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he was "humbled" to be
picked.
"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 Tuesday the president-elect also nominated Jim O’Neill - a former
federal health official and close ally of conservative donor Peter Thiel
- as deputy secretary of the health department.
But it is Bhattacharya who's more widely known after he challenged the
public health establishment's response to the Covid outbreak four years ago.
In October 2020, Bhattacharya co-authored an open letter known as the
Great Barrington Declaration, calling for an alternative to lockdowns,
recommending that the focus should instead be on protecting vulnerable
groups such as elderly people.
Who has joined Trump's top team?
He remains a vocal critic of how Anthony Fauci - a former director of
the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division
of NIH - handled the pandemic.
Then-NIH director Francis Collins said at the time the Great Barrington
Declaration, which came before Covid vaccines were available, was
dangerous, dismissing the authors as “fringe experts”.
Bhattacharya is not the only Trump nominee to have criticised the
response of US public health agencies to the pandemic.
Trump has also picked Marty Makary, 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
cast doubt on vaccine safety, was picked to run the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC).
Kennedy and O'Neill’s department of health would oversee the agencies
run by Makary, Weldon and Bhattacharya, but all five need to be
confirmed by the Senate.
Last week Trump also nominated TV personality Dr Mehmet Oz to be the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator.
While Trump’s picks for US public health agencies have broadly been
welcomed by his allies, not all of them have won a positive reception
from conservatives.
He has also nominated Dr Janette Nesheiwat, a Fox News medical
contributor, to become the next surgeon general.
But her previous comments opposing abortion restrictions and in support
of masking schoolchildren during the pandemic have riled some Trump
supporters.
Donald Trump
US politics