Senate Confirms COVID Lockdown Opponent Dr. Jay Bhattacharya To Lead NIH

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was confirmed Tuesday night by the Senate in a party-line vote to lead the National Institutes of Health.

The Senate voted 53-47 to confirm Bhattacharya with all Republicans supporting his nomination and every Democrat voting against confirming the Stanford School of Medicine medical professor. Bhattacharya has promised to bring more accountability to the NIH, which oversees tens of billions of dollars in federal grant dollars. 

“The mission of the NIH is to address the health needs the American people have and to expand life expectancy of the American people. And we have not achieved that. It’s flatlined,” Bhattacharya said during his confirmation hearing earlier this month before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

Bhattacharya widely rose to prominence during the COVID pandemic, when he was a sharp critic of the government-imposed lockdowns and was one of the first to express concerns about the safety and efficacy of vaccine mandates. During COVID, he was an advisor to Florida, aiding Governor Ron DeSantis in the reopening of the Sunshine State. 

“Science should be an engine for freedom. Knowledge and freedom … it shouldn’t be pushing mandates for vaccines like the COVID vaccines,” Bhattacharya said during his confirmation hearing. “The role of the scientist should not be to say that you can’t send your kid to school for two years.”

In his nomination announcement, President Donald Trump said that Bhattacharya would work alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “Make America Healthy Again” and “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 also promised during his confirmation hearing that he would support experiments that take different approaches to an issue, saying that much of the established scientific community has failed to provide satisfactory answers. 

On Tuesday, the Senate also voted 56-44 to confirm Dr. Marty Makary to head up the Food and Drug Administration. Democrat Senators Dick Durbin (IL), Maggie Hassan (NH), and Jeanne Shaheen (NH) joined Republicans in voting for Makary. 

When he nominated Makary, Trump said that he would work with RFK Jr. to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our Nation’s food supply and drugs and biologics being given to our Nation’s youth, so that we can finally address the Childhood Chronic Disease Epidemic.”