Senate Confirms Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as NIH Director
Bhattacharya’s position will help ensure we never have senseless lockdowns again, even if there is a bird-flu-monkeypox-covid frankenvirus released from a gain-of-function laboratory.
The last time we wrote about Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, medical freedom advocate and champion of sensible COVID policies, Scientific American magazine published a critical piece arguing that his nomination as National Institutes of Health (NIH) director could harm science and public health.
Fortunately, science and reason prevailed in the US Senate today, and Bhattacharya is now the head of that agency.
I will simply point out that logic and rationale decision-making occurred strictly along party lines.
The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health, Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, the Stanford University doctor and economist who rose to prominence as a vocal critic of the country’s handling of the covid-19 pandemic.
The 53-47 party-line vote Tuesday means that Bhattacharya — one of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, the pandemic critique that urged health officials to end stay-at-home orders — will take charge of the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research. His tenure atop an agency he has criticized comes at a time when the $48 billion arm of the Department of Health and Human Services has been hit by significant staff and research cuts.
Bhattacharya, a physician and professor of medicine at Stanford University, gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic for his opposition to widespread lockdowns and other restrictive measures. He was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for protecting vulnerable populations while circulating the virus among lower-risk groups.
This is a karma. According to the Twitter Files released in December 2022, Bhattacharya was placed on a Twitter “Trends blacklist” in August 2021, which prevented his tweets from appearing in trending topics searches. This action coincided with his first tweet on the platform, which advocated for the Great Barrington Declaration’s herd immunity proposal.
4 years ago, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was on a COVID blacklist on Twitter. Today, he was confirmed for Director of the NIH. pic.twitter.com/sQpG8kuUCZ
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 25, 2025
As a reminder, The Great Barrington Declaration, published in October 2020, advocated for ending covidlockdowns and implementing a strategy called “Focused Protection,” which aimed to shield vulnerable populations while allowing the virus to spread among lower-risk individuals. The declaration was authored Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta (Oxford University), and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University).
Dr. Francis Collins, then director of the NIH, strongly opposed the declaration. In private emails to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Collins referred to its authors as “fringe epidemiologists” and called for a “quick and devastating takedown” of its premises. He expressed concerns about the declaration’s influence and alignment with certain political ideologies (namely the ones calling for and end to the useless lockdowns). Collins’s actions were criticized for suppressing scientific debate, with some commentators accusing him of fostering a narrow-minded approach during the pandemic.
Not only narrow-minded, but wrong.
How it started: Disgraced NIH Director Francis Collins demands a "devastating takedown" of @DrJBhattacharya's Great Barrington Declaration that called for covid lockdowns to end.
How it's going: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is officially on his way to his old office. pic.twitter.com/UlcbGG6P4W
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 25, 2025
This is a YUGE win for scientific debate and medical freedom, and another successful nod to the Make American Healthy Again contingent that helped elect President Donald Trump.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was just CONFIRMED as President Trump’s NIH Director
This is a huge win for MAHA and medical freedom.
He pledged to support free speech and dissident scientists as NIH Director.
“Dissent is the very essence of science.”
“23% of Americans have not much… pic.twitter.com/gXAab7SYaC
— Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) March 25, 2025
In his new position, Bhattacharya wants to amend how science funding is directed and would like more research on vaccines.
He has also argued for reforms to scientific funding practices, including applying greater scrutiny to research findings that are not borne out by subsequent studies and directing money toward the most far-reaching and innovative research rather than incremental studies.
Questioned by lawmakers this month about the safety of vaccines, Dr. Bhattacharya said that he supported children’s inoculation against diseases like measles, but also that scientists should conduct more research on autism and vaccines…
This is great news, as Bhattacharya’s position will help ensure we never have senseless lockdowns again, even if there is a bird-flu-monkeypox-covid frankenvirus released from a gain-of-function laboratory.
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Comments
Not one Democrat Senator voted to confirm. Disgraceful.
But not unexpected. Remember who politicized the covid panicdemic.
.
I say this with hesitancy, but I am coming to the conclusion that today’s Democrat party is truly evil and anti-American.
Don’t hesitate! Jump in with both feet. The water’s fine.
If you train yourself to think of them automatically as the party of organized and unorganized crime, it will rarely go wrong.
This should have been an easy confirmation to get behind.
A man of science and evidence, brilliant, serious, non-partisan.
Why Republicans ever gave a single vote to any Democrat nominations – uniformly partisan, unserious, and incompetent under Biden.
Not surprising, without the covid dempanic their pedophile Biden would never have gotten into office.
Not only disgraceful but racist.
Oh, don’t go there.
From being a target of the evil federal government to running the agency that tried to ruin him. Congratulations to the good doctor!
I’m amazed! McConnell voted for him.
Does the Turtle have an autopen?
“Scientific American magazine published a critical piece arguing that his nomination as National Institutes of Health (NIH) director could harm science and public health.”
Scientific American (SA) has also attacked Steve Koonin’s book “Unsettled.” Most critical reviews of the book reference the SA article to which he responded. The article was little more than a personal attack on Koonin. No science.
I’d like to know how we can make predictions about future climate when we lack an existence proof for smooth solutions to the Navier Stokes equations for all initial conditions. I asked ChatGpt this question and and got a political response that avoided the question. This morning I asked Grok 3 the same question, and got an “out of service” answer. I’ll try again later. The “climate change” advocates don’t like this fundamental question. Many haven’t even heard of the Navier Stokes equations.
Such is the sorry state of science today, but the confirmation of Jay Bhattacharya comes across as a step in the right direction. Richard Feynman famously told us that science consists of proving the experts wrong, or words to that effect. Bhattacharya seems to understand this. So this great news.
Also “climate models” which purport to foresee 10+ years into the future (pick the one which agrees with your religion). And global temperature measurements with a 0.1 degree Celsius accuracy.
“The Science” has become a joke.
another MAGA lackey whose major qualification is that he answered ‘yes’ to this question from Harvey Weinstein.
” No matter how stupid something I say is, will you back it up”.
transvestite 1156 bears an uncanny resemblance to my neighbor’s ugly mutt who will, when let out of his yard, sneak over to my yard to take a dump and then run home at full speed.
The mutt here also barks whatever and whenever his masters tell him. “Speak, boy! Speak!”
1156 sure knows his script though. He’s busy these days restoring democracy by vandalizing Teslas.
Never reproduce and stay away from children. You’re a bad influence and seriously defective mentally and emotionally.
Speaking of “lackey,” here you are.
“Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you…”
the dems would have gone with the yea vote if the guy had been from mainland china
Meanwhile in Australia and New Zealand doctors are being struck off or fined heavily for not toeing the line with their Chinese Death Kooties unapproved thoughts.
I hope he’s an anti-jabber. Those covid shots didn’t work and they killed people!!
I remember watching an interview Dr. Bhattacharya did with Peter Robinson way back at the beginning of Covid, when nobody really knew that much about it He looked like a guy to keep an eye on, and later when they wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, that indeed played out. Unfortunately, the system was either too corrupt or too stupid to see the wisdom in that.
It was an honor to sign the Great Barrington Declaration when it was first put out there. It is a founding document of the Common Sense Revolution.
DR. Bhattacharya took a stand against the lies and stupidity of the forced march for the jabs. He was right.
Wonderful to see that FINALLY someone is using his mind and talents for the better of humanity. Congratulations, Dr.
I would like to see someone appointed as “Climate Czar” to drive a true scientific discussion of the issue.
Does man change climate?
If so, how severe is it?
Will the “solutions” propose alleviate the problem if it exists or will they do more harm than good?
I’m a climate skeptic, but I’m willing to entertain other opinions provided they are rooted in science, made by scientists, and drained of the toxic politics.
I will also add drained of the money that has contaminated the whole issue,
It might stop the federal government from pushing for mandatory lockdowns, masks, and vaccines on citizens but it does nothing to stop the state and local public health services/departments from unilaterally invoking their dictatorial powers and imposing lockdowns and mask mandates and vaccines on the local populations in the event of a “public health emergency”.
As far as I can tell no state legislature or local county/city government entities have amended their public health laws to remove the power of the public health services to unilaterally impose draconian measures upon the population in the event of another “public health emergency”.
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