Trump 2.0: Who is Jay Bhattacharya, the lockdown critic appointed as director of National Institutes of Health?
US President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Indian-origin Stanford academic Jay Bhattacharya as the new director of the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya is the first Indian-American to be nominated by Trump for a top administrative position for his second term in office.
What Trump said about?Jay Bhattacharya
"I am thrilled to nominate Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bhattacharya will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to direct the nation's medical research and to make important discoveries that will improve health and save lives," Trump announced.
"Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will 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. Together, they will work hard to Make America Healthy Again," he said.
Who is Jay Bhattacharya
Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, and a senior fellow by courtesy at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Hoover Institution, according to Trump.
He directs Stanford's Centre for Demography and Economics of Health and Ageing. His research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, emphasising the role of government programmes, biomedical innovation, and economics. His peer-reviewed research has been published in economics, statistics, legal, medical, public health, and health policy journals.
Director of NIH
As the NIH director, he will oversee 27 institutes and centres that conduct early-stage research on everything from vaccines for emerging pandemic threats to targets for new drugs.
Jay Bhattacharya's stands on COVID lockdown? ?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhattacharya emerged as one of the biggest critics of the US government's policies, including the stringent lockdowns. Instead, in October 2020, he co-authored a research paper called The Great Barrington Declaration, which proposed an alternative to lockdowns. It stressed the idea of herd immunity and called for a return to life as normal for those who were not vulnerable to the virus.
Elon Musk responded to his appointment, reposting a post that claimed that?Bhattacharya was blacklisted on Twitter during the pandemic for his views on COVID-19.
'Great outcome', Musk said while resharing the post.
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