Senate Confirms Jay Bhattacharya to Lead NIH and Marty Makary to Head FDA
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted, 53-47, to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to serve as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest provider of funds for biomedical research.
On Tuesday as well, the Senate voted, 56-44, to confirm the president’s choice of Dr. Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, became well-known in October 2020 when he co-authored, with fellow epidemiologists Drs. Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta, the Great Barrington Declaration, which urged a strategy of “focused protection” during the COVID pandemic, rather than the forced and highly politicized shutdown of schools, businesses, and churches, and mandatory mRNA shots.
The Declaration – which now has nearly one million co-signers – warned of the damaging health and social impacts of such draconian policies that, ultimately, the authors asserted, would prevent herd immunity from developing in the population.
In his remarks at the opening of his confirmation hearing, Bhattacharya said that while the NIH is “the crown jewel of American biomedical sciences,” still “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,” Bhattacharya observed, noting that “23% have not much or no confidence at all.”
Bhattacharya said he had “five concrete goals” to achieve, if confirmed:
1. To focus NIH research on solutions to “the American chronic disease crisis.”
2. To solve “the crisis of scientific data reliability.”
3. To “establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the NIH.”
4. To recommit the NIH to its “mission to fund the most innovative biomedical research agenda possible to improve American health.”
5. To “vigorously regulate risky research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic.”
As Roll Call noted, Makary, a former Johns Hopkins University surgeon, “has been widely seen as a more middle-of-the-road pick compared to Trump’s other choices to lead the Department of Health and Human Services’ subagencies.”
In an op-ed at Fox News in 2021, Makary criticized the Biden FDA, calling instead for “fresh leadership at the FDA to change the culture at the agency and promote scientific advancement, not hinder it."
"We now have a generational opportunity in American healthcare," Makary said at his confirmation hearing.
"President Trump and Secretary Kennedy's focus on healthy foods has galvanized a grassroots movement in America,” he added. “Childhood obesity is not a willpower problem, and the rise of early-onset Alzheimer's is not a genetic cause. We should be, and we will, be addressing food as it impacts our health."
Nevertheless, Makary also promised during his confirmation hearing that he would review the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts to the FDA workforce.
He also asserted he had no “preconceived plans” to change the FDA’s regulations on the abortion drug mifepristone, which, under the Biden administration, the agency agreed to waive the requirement of in-person dispensing.
While Makary also said he agreed with recommendations that Vitamin A can be helpful in treating measles in children, he defended the use of vaccines for children with measles.
“[V]accines save lives, and I do believe that any child who dies on a vaccine-preventable illness is a tragedy in the modern era,” Makary said.