Donald Trump Appoints Kolkata-Born Jay Bhattacharya as NIH Director

Jay Bhattacharya as NIH Director: Donald Trump has chosen Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian-American physician and economist from Stanford, to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"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 said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

"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 said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

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Bhattacharya met with Robert F Kennedy Junior this week who was Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services which oversees the NIH and other health agencies.

He impressed Kennedy with his plans to reform the NIH which funds US biomedical research according to The Washington Post.

The NIH also funds hundreds of thousands of researchers, conducts clinical trials and supports development of drugs and therapeutics.

The NIH director nominee must be confirmed by the Senate which will have a Republican majority in January.

Bhattacharya was a vocal critic of the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the early days.

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In October 2020, he co-authored an open letter during Trump’s presidency, advocating for an end to pandemic shutdowns while calling for "focused protections" for high-risk groups, such as the elderly.

This was music to the ears of Republican lawmakers and many Americans who wanted to get back to normal.

But it was met with strong criticism from public health officials including then-NIH Director Francis Collins who said it was too early and too dangerous as vaccines had not been developed yet.

Also, Bhattacharya has argued to reduce the influence of certain institutes and centers within the NIH saying that some career civil servants were shaping national pandemic policies and stifling dissenting views.

He and others have also targeted Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for playing too big a role in the country’s COVID-19 response under both Trump and Biden administrations before he retired in December 2022.

Born in 1968 in Kolkata, Bhattacharya got his MD from Stanford in 1997 and PhD in economics from the same in 2000.

He is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. He directs the Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Ageing at Stanford.

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