By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health, vocal U.S. COVID-19 policy critic Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, is widely expected to advance after facing questions on Wednesday in a Senate committee confirmation hearing.
Republicans who control the Senate have largely embraced the nomination, arguing that Bhattacharya’s skepticism of federal pandemic policies reflects the need for reform at the NIH. All of Trump’s high-level nominations have been confirmed, regardless of how unconventional or controversial they have been.
First, he is likely to be grilled by Senate Democrats about the agency’s independence and commitment to unbiased scientific research in a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, before the panel votes on whether or not to advance him to the Senate floor.
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.
The NIH director oversees 27 institutes and centers that conduct early-stage research on everything from vaccines for emerging pandemic threats to targets for new drugs.
He is set to face immediate challenges, including legal battles over Trump’s proposed cuts to federal research funding. A federal judge last month temporarily blocked the cuts.
Bhattacharya, a Stanford University-trained physician and health economist, gained prominence as a leading critic of lockdowns and widespread COVID-19 restrictions.
He co-authored the October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which argued for “focused protection” of vulnerable populations while allowing broader societal reopening. He sued the government afterward, alleging that it pressured social media platforms to censor his opinions.
Bhattacharya’s views put him at odds with mainstream public health leaders, including former White House medical adviser and ex-director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Bhattacharya has called for shifting the agency’s focus toward funding more innovative research and reducing the influence of some of its longest-serving career officials.
He has long advocated for greater scrutiny of public health guidance and has accused the scientific establishment of suppressing dissenting views.
“Over the last few years, top NIH officials oversaw a culture of cover-up, obfuscation, and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs,” he will say on Wednesday, according to prepared remarks first reported by Bloomberg.
Democrats are expected to press him on his views regarding vaccine mandates, public health funding, and his proposed reforms linking NIH grants to free speech protections on university campuses.
They will also press him on the recent and any planned future cuts to agency staffing, part of a wider wave of firings that has seen thousands of federal employees terminated at multiple agencies as Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk accelerate their purge of the U.S. federal bureaucracy.
The NIH has been in the crosshairs of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s head of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH. Kennedy said in November he would act quickly to fire 600 people there and replace them with new hires.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)
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