Trump’s NIH Nominee Vows To Ensure Transparency, Accountability

By Jacob Adams, The Daily Signal | March 05, 2025

During his confirmation hearing Wednesday to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya promised he would bring transparency and accountability to federal government-funded research. 

Appearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Bhattacharya decried the government research establishment for abusing its authority during the COVID-19 pandemic and for attempting to silence dissenting voices within the scientific community.

“The NIH can and must solve the crisis of scientific data reliability,” Bhattacharya said in his opening statement. 

“If confirmed, I will establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the NIH. Over the last few years, top NIH officials oversaw a culture of cover-up, obfuscation, and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs. Dissent is the very essence of science,” said Bhattacharya, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine.

Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., told The Daily Signal that Americans were concerned with the trustworthiness of public health institutions as a result of their actions during COVID-19. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans lost trust in public institutions because of fearmongering and lies. We need someone who can restore public trust and deliver tangible solutions on the biggest health priorities for American families,” she said.

“I am confident that President [Donald] Trump’s NIH director nominee, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, will get it done,” the Florida senator said. 

Bhattacharya is a highly respected scientist who holds both an M.D. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, where he is also currently a professor of health policy. He became a national figure when he co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter published in October 2020 that called for a targeted approach called “Focused Protection” to combating COVID-19 and an end to lockdowns for those who were not vulnerable to the disease. 

A few days after the public release of the open letter, then-NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins emailed Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was at the time the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In the email, he derided Bhattacharya and his two co-authors, Sunetra Gupta, a professor at Oxford University, and Martin Kulldorff, then a professor at Harvard University, as “fringe epidemiologists.”

Collins told Fauci that there needed to be a “quick and devastating published takedown of [the declaration’s] premises.” Twitter subsequently blacklisted Bhattacharya by quietly limiting the reach of his tweets.

Collins would later say he made a mistake in his public health approach to COVID-19. 

In a twist of fate, the COVID-19 consensus-questioning Bhattacharya is now poised to lead the agency responsible for federal funding of biomedical and public health research in the United States, and the social media platform that once censored him has since been sold and renamed and is now owned by an ardent ally of the president who nominated him. 

At the hearing Wednesday, Bhattacharya also said that he would prohibit research on tissue from aborted fetuses in NIH-funded grants. The Stanford professor explained that it was important to have research the ethics of which were not questioned by large swaths of Americans. 

“In public health, we need to make sure the products of … science are ethically acceptable to everybody,” Bhattacharya told Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

Bhattacharya advocated for increasing transparency for the “indirect costs” grants that go to universities from NIH. The indirect costs are usually designated for purposes such as facilities upkeep and administration. In February, the NIH under Trump dropped “indirect” funding costs down to 15% for all research grantees.  

“I think transparency regarding indirect costs is absolutely worthwhile,” Bhattacharya said. “I want to make sure that the money goes to research.”

Bhattacharya also talked about doing more to combat Alzheimer’s disease, which afflicts nearly 1 in 9 Americans aged 65 years or older. 

“I want to expand the set of things that we look at as a possible cause for Alzheimer’s so that we can make advances,” he said.

The Stanford professor also talked about expanding research on off-label drugs.

“I think there’s a very specific thing that we haven’t done, but we should do. The NIH should fund research on off-patent, off-label use of off patent drugs, inexpensive drugs,” Bhattacharya told Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.alism fellow at The Daily Signal.

Jacob Adams is a journalism fellow at The Daily Signal.

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