If this is winning, it is less fun than I had hoped.
The confirmation hearings for Jay Bhattacharya as secretary of the National Institutes of Health just ended. They were short, just two hours from soup to nuts. Nothing played out like I had expected. And yet, now that I think about it, it played out exactly as I should have expected.
Jay’s erudition, humility, and sincerity carried the day. His vast knowledge of medicine, science, and economics is worn casually, but it is unmistakable. It’s inconceivable that political actors could possibly match it. That is known and obvious.
My main interest in watching was in hope of something approaching a real debate over Covid policy, 2020-2023 (and, in some ways, continuing in new iterations). After all, that is why he was in this seat. The previous administration specifically targeted him, calling him a “fringe epidemiologist” and sought to censor his opinions.
As time went on and the historical trajectory flipped, this quiet academic who stood up for principle when it mattered has found himself picked to head the world’s most powerful scientific agency.
One might suppose – if society and politics work as one might intuitively think they should – that there would now be a big discussion and debate on lockdowns, with both sides allowed to speak. Maybe this would be the reckoning we’ve all long awaited.
Instead, there was no discussion and no debate at all. The Democratic side of the aisle did not bring it up once. Three Republicans did and briefly. Jay reiterated what he has said for years and what was stated in the Great Barrington Declaration.
His position is clear. The role of science is to advise people based on evidence. It is not to use force to interfere with people’s freedoms. Public health agencies should never have pushed school, business, and church closures, nor forced human separation and masks, and so on. He said this clearly, inclusive of vaccine mandates.
“Science should be an engine for knowledge and freedom, not something that stands on top of society and says you must do this or else.”
“It shouldn’t be pushing Covid vaccines.”
“The proper role of scientists in a pandemic is to answer basic questions that policy makers have about what the right policy should be.”
“The role of scientists shouldn’t be to say you can’t send your kids to school for two years.”
“If science is a force for freedom and knowledge, it will have universal support.”
There was zero pushback from the other side. They might as well have had their fingers in their ears. There was a change of subject, almost a desperate one. No one took issue with a word he said on this subject. Instead, the only subject from the Democratic side was pressing to make sure that the money keeps flowing out of the NIH to the research centers in their states.
Are we supposed to believe that the new orthodoxy is that the Covid response was a disaster? No one said that but Jay, Rand Paul, and two other Republicans. From the other side, there was not even a breath of contradiction.
At the same time, there were no apologies, no admissions of stupidity, no granting that mistakes were made. Instead, we got silence on the whole topic that even the New York Times now admits is the single most important topic of our times.
After all, the Covid response did in fact set the world on fire. It is a main cause of the utter collapse in the prestige of experts in many sectors, if not all sectors. It’s a central reason why people don’t trust their doctors, why the media is in such disrepute, why the politicians are met with such incredulity. It’s the major contributing factor for ill-health, illiteracy, depression, substance abuse, economic dislocation, job insecurity, and cultural despair.
And yet, we seem to be at a stalemate. The proponents of the response – or those who simply chose to look the other way – don’t want the subject to come up ever again. It is an affected amnesia. The people who were demonized all along and now turn out to be right want to debate but cannot find any sparring partners.
We won the match but the bell never rang. The purpose of the bell is to prevent an ambush from behind, which is precisely why this studied silence is so alarming.
What happens when a new virus comes along, real, manufactured, or imagined? We have no real statements saying that there will not be a repeat. The existing policy is still what it was: lockdown until vaccination. To be sure, with Jay and RFK and others now in the driver’s seat, this is less likely to go down the same way.
And yet if you look at the handling of the Bird flu, you see the same strategies being deployed in ways that have affected prices and the food supply. Authorities want every bird slaughtered if one tests positive. They feed tax dollars to pharmaceutical companies to develop and distribute livestock vaccines. There has been no change in the policy concerning PCR testing and what that implies for the animals.
Meanwhile, just before inauguration, the HHS, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of the Interior cooperated in pushing out the first-ever One Health policy for the US, working directly with the WHO, which the US has supposedly left.
In other words, there is no real change in the policy or the orthodoxy. One reason for that is precisely because of the absence of real public discussion and debate. If such a debate did occur, and if our leaders would at least be open and honest about this calamity (even if they still defend it), we might finally make progress toward putting the world back together again.
As it stands, there are too many unanswered questions, too much pent-up anger, too much uncertainty about precisely how governments plan to manage pandemics, whether they affect humans or livestock. It simply will not do to pretend that none of this happened and hope it goes away once people are tired of the subject, forget, and push back the trauma into the recesses of the public mind.
This is all too dishonest for a civilized people. Jay wanted that debate. His interrogators did not.
Again, this is not the way winning should feel.
Brownstone Institute’s 10-part history could not have come at a better time. We need more than the right people in high-profile positions. We need a completely new paradigm, which cannot really take hold until that reckoning finally does occur. That begins with frankness and an end to the silence.
Opening Statement by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, March 5, 2025
Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Hearing
Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya
Opening Statement
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions
March 5, 2025
Chairman Cassidy, Ranking Member Sanders, and members of the Senate HELP committee, I am honored to speak with you today and deeply humbled by President Trump’s nomination. I am delighted to have my wife Cathy, my son Matthew, and my brother Deep with me today. My other two adult children, Jodie and Benjamin, unfortunately could not attend today but are here in spirit.
The NIH has played a pivotal role in my career. I served as a standing member of NIH grant review committees. I helped many trainees prepare for scientific careers with NIH support. And I won NIH funding to study population aging, chronic disease, and obesity. I have made the study
of scientific institutions – including the NIH itself – a focus of my own scientific work. The NIH is the crown jewel of American biomedical science, with a long and illustrious history supporting breakthroughs in biology and medicine. I have the utmost respect for NIH scientists
and staff over the decades who have contributed to this success. The NIH’s mission – to support scientific discovery to enhance health and lengthen life – is vital to our country’s future and, indeed, the world’s.
I love the NIH, but post-pandemic, American biomedical sciences are at a crossroads. A November 2024 Pew study reported that only 26% of the American public had “a great deal of confidence” in scientists to act in the public’s best interest; 23% have not too much or no
confidence at all.
So, how can I help NIH better achieve its mission? I have five concrete goals if confirmed as director of the NIH.
Chronic Disease Crisis
First, NIH research should focus on research to solve the American chronic disease crisis. American health is going backwards. Life expectancy flatlined between 2012 and 2019, plummeted during the pandemic, and has still not bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. The
chronic disease crisis is severe, with hundreds of millions of American adults and children suffering from obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. If confirmed, I will carry out President Trump and Secretary Kenn edy’s agenda of Making America Health Again and committing the NIH to address the dire chronic health needs of the country with gold-standard science and innovation.
Reliability Crisis
Second, NIH-supported science should be replicable, reproducible, and generalizable. Unfortunately, much modern biomedical science fails this basic test. The NIH itself just last year faced a research integrity scandal involving research on Alzheimer’s disease that throws into question hundreds of research papers. If the data generated by scientists is not reliable, the products of such science cannot help anyone. It is no stretch to think that the slow progress on Alzheimer’s disease is linked to this problem. The NIH can and must solve the current crisis of scientific data reliability, and under my leadership, if confirmed, it will do so.
Crisis of Scientific Dissent
Third, 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 coverup, obfuscation, and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs. Dissent is the very essence of science. I will foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists – including early career scientists – can express disagreement respectfully.
Crisis of Innovation
Fourth, the NIH must recommit to its mission to fund the most innovative biomedical research agenda possible to improve American health. My plan is to ensure that the NIH invests in cutting-edge research in every field to make big advances rather than just small, incremental
progress over years and sometimes decades.
Crisis of Gain of Function Research
Fifth, the NIH must vigorously regulate risky research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic. It should embrace transparency in all its operations. While the vast majority of biomedical research poses no risk of harm to research subjects or the public, the NIH must
ensure that it never supports work that causes harm. If confirmed, I will work with Congress and the Administration to guarantee that happens.
Conclusion
While I believe there are real problems that need to be addressed, I want to finish by reiterating my great respect for the work and mission of the NIH.
If confirmed, I will carry out President Trump’s agenda of making the public science institutions of the country worthy of trust and Make America Healthy Again.
