Warning that “American health is going backwards,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, President Donald Trump’s Indian American nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health, has vowed to tackle chronic diseases.
Bhattacharya, a Stanford University professor who was a vocal critic of Covid-19 lockdowns, told a U.S. Senate panel he plans to focus the agency on chronic diseases, improve research integrity, and foster scientific dissent. His five key goals also include supporting innovative biomedical research and regulating high-risk studies.
“American health is going backwards,” Bhattacharya told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, citing rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and chronic illnesses.
Emphasizing the urgency of tackling what he called a “chronic disease crisis,” he noted, “Life expectancy flatlined between 2012 and 2019, plummeted during the pandemic, and still has not bounced back to pre-pandemic levels.”
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If confirmed, he pledged to focus NIH research on reversing these trends, saying he would carry out President Trump and Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy JR’s agenda of committing the NIH “to address the dire chronic health needs of the country with gold standard science and innovation.”
Committee chairman Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and physician, questioned Bhattacharya over his stance on investigating a potential link between autism and childhood vaccinations, an issue embraced by Kennedy.
“I don’t generally believe there is a link, based on my reading of the literature,” Bhattacharya said. “But we do have a sharp rise in autism rates, and I don’t think any scientist really knows the cause of it. I would support a broad scientific agenda based on data to get an answer to that.”
“It’s a tragedy that a child would die from a vaccine-preventable disease,” Bhattacharya said disagreeing with Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic. “I fully support children being vaccinated for diseases like measles that can be prevented with vaccination efforts.”
Once confirmed by the full Senate, Bhattacharya will lead the nation’s premier medical research agency, overseeing a nearly $50 billion budget and funding for thousands of scientific projects.
Bhattacharya said that if confirmed, he would assess funding allocations and work to ensure research efforts continued despite administration’s push to cap indirect NIH grant costs at 15%. He acknowledged that indirect costs funding support critical infrastructure, but called for greater transparency. “People distrust how that money is used,” he said.
Bhattacharya gained prominence as a leading critic of lockdowns and widespread Covid-19 restrictions. He co-authored the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, advocating “focused protection” for the vulnerable while reopening society.