Trump taps COVID lockdown critic Jay Bhattacharya to lead top health agency alongside vaccine skeptic RFK Jr.

Donald Trump picked Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford doc silenced for challenging Biden medication lockdown policies, to tally the National Institutes of Health.

Trump says that Bhattacharya volition enactment with Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. portion moving the country's apical nationalist funder of aesculapian probe with a fund of immoderate $47.3 billion.

The president-elect said successful a statement: 'Together, Jay and RFK Jr. volition reconstruct the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research arsenic they analyse the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America's biggest Health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease. Together, they volition enactment hard to Make America Healthy Again!'

Bhattacharya, a Stanford wellness argumentation prof and doctor, was an outspoken professional of the U.S. government's COVID-19 policies during the pandemic. 

The Stanford-trained doc and economist met with Kennedy this week and impressed him with his ideas to overhaul NIH. 

Bhattacharya has called for shifting the agency's absorption toward backing much innovative probe and reducing the power of immoderate of its longest-serving vocation officials, the study added.

Along with 2 different academics, helium published the Great Barrington Declaration successful October 2020.

Trump cited the Great Barrington Declaration among the doctor's credentials for getting the job. 

The Great Barrington Declaration called for ‘focused protection,’ an thought that would mean the bulk of efforts to summation immunity would beryllium centered connected the astir susceptible groups – the aged and the immunocompromised – with fewer restrictions connected the wide steadfast population.

Without those restrictions, much radical would make Covid that would confer antibodies against infection, producing herd immunity.

As much and much radical go infected and aboriginal immune for a play of time, the microorganism has less opportunities to dispersed and infect susceptible people.

But the thought was slammed by galore mainstream scientists, including those similar Fauci and NIH Director Frances Collins, who worked successful the Biden administration. Many criticized the thought arsenic unsafe and would pb to galore preventable deaths.

Bhattacharya sued the authorities afterward, alleging that it pressured societal media platforms to censor his opinions. 

In 2023, a national court ruled that the Biden Administration coerced social media sites to censor him and his co-authors. 

He graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine successful 1997 and received his doctorate from Stanford's Department of Economics successful 2000, according to his resume.

Just days earlier his information arsenic HHS secretary, RFK Jr. said helium would enactment rapidly to occurrence 600 radical astatine the NIH and regenerate them each with caller hires. 

The bureau employs astir 20,000 people.

In summation to occupation cuts, Kennedy has said helium aims to displacement NIH's absorption from infectious diseases specified arsenic COVID-19, to tackling imaginable cures for chronic diseases, specified arsenic diabetes. 

During the COVID pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, manager of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease who served connected President Trump's coronavirus task force, became a predominant people of Republicans for contradicting immoderate of Trump's coronavirus policies and recommendations, starring to calls for his dismissal.

Collins, the NIH manager and Fauci's boss, defended Fauci successful a July 2020 interrogation with STAT News, saying it was 'unimaginable' to see firing Fauci, arsenic immoderate Republicans had demanded. 

As a vocation national employee, Fauci's occupation was shielded from governmental firings by national civilian work regulations, protections Trump has vowed to undo.