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Stanford University professor and Covid-19 lockdown sceptic Jay Bhattacharya has emerged as the frontrunner to run the National Institutes of Health, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The nomination of Bhattacharya, who rose to prominence during the pandemic for opposing lockdown restrictions, would put another ally of Robert Kennedy Jr, the vaccine sceptic who is Trump’s pick to run the US health department, in charge of one of the country’s most powerful public health agencies.
With an annual budget of $48bn, NIH is the biggest government-funded biomedical research agency in the world, providing more than 60,000 grants a year to support medical and scientific research.
Senior officials within Trump’s transition team have spoken with Bhattacharya, who runs Stanford’s Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, in recent days, the people said.
The pick for NIH director is likely to be announced in the coming days but plans may change and another candidate may emerge, the people added.
Representatives for Trump’s transition team and Kennedy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Bhattacharya could also not be reached for comment.
Late on Friday, Trump’s transition team announced a flurry of high profile nominations, including Treasury secretary, Labor secretary and three key health official picks.
Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon who opposed the Covid-19 vaccine mandate, was nominated to run the Food and Drug Administration. Physician and former GOP congressman Dave Weldon, who has cast doubts on vaccine safety, was tapped to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Bhattacharya appeared alongside Kennedy at a campaign event during his independent campaign for President, during which he unveiled his running mate Nicole Shanahan.
Since backing Trump’s bid for presidency in August, Kennedy has been given significant influence over the president’s healthcare policy agenda as part of his “Make American Healthy Again” campaign. Trump’s choice of Fox News medical contributor Janette Nesheiwat was the only one of the health appointees so far not close to Kennedy, the people added.
Alongside two other professors, Bhattacharya became the face of the “Great Barrington Declaration” during the pandemic, an open letter published in October 2020 opposing widescale lockdowns and instead calling for restrictions focused on at-risk groups, such as elderly individuals. The letter provoked criticism from then-NIH director Francis Collins, who dismissed the authors as “fringe experts”.
Much of Bhattacharya’s public criticism of the NIH has focused on how Collins and Anthony Fauci — former director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of NIH — responded to the pandemic.
Bhattacharya told the Financial Times this month that he supported term limits for NIH directors. “I think there’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few people: there should not be another Tony Fauci,” he said.
Kennedy’s nomination as Health and Human Services secretary has worried the pharmaceutical industry and public health bodies because of his sceptical views on vaccines, his stated aim to eliminate “entire departments” within the FDA and his plans to remove fluoride from drinking water. However, Kennedy has promised not to limit vaccine access.
In an article on digital media site UnHerd published last week, Bhattacharya brushed away concerns about some of Kennedy’s debunked claims, saying: “Kennedy is not a scientist, but his good-faith calls for better research and more debate are echoed by many Americans.”
He added that “the American public voted for disrupters like RFK Jr in 2024, and academic medicine now has an opportunity to atone for its Covid-era blunders.”