Great Barrington Declaration Co-Author, Jay Bhattacharya, Named NIH Director by Trump

Jay Bhattacharya has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be the Director of the NIH for the new administration. Bhattacharya is a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine and is most famously known as one of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for an end to COVID-19 lockdowns except for those considered “high risk.”

In an X post, Bhattacharya said, “I am honored and humbled by President @realDonaldTrump‘s nomination of me to be the next @NIH director. We will reform American scientific institutions so that they are worthy of trust again and will deploy the fruits of excellent science to make America healthy again!”

The NIH has been under fire in recent years for conducting gain-of-function research. It also funded the coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where the COVID-19 pandemic is believed to have started in late 2019.

Senator Rand Paul and the White Coat Waste Project have been vocal critics of wasteful spending in the NIH, as The HighWire reported last week about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was nominated for HHS Director under the upcoming Trump administration, which oversees the CDC, FDA, NIH, and others.

Kennedy posted on X in response to Bhattacharya’s nomination. “I’m so grateful to President Trump for this spectacular appointment. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is the ideal leader to restore NIH as the international template for gold-standard science and evidence-based medicine.“

Francis Collins served as the NIH Director during the pandemic while Dr. Fauci was the NIAID Director. Collins wrote a private email to Fauci about the Great Barrington Declaration, which received a lot of attention. Collins stated that the proposal was authored by “three fringe epidemiologists.” Collin said, “There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don’t see anything like that online yet – is it underway?”

Senator Rand Paul has been a vocal opponent of Dr. Fauci since the start of the pandemic and criticized the former Director for approving dangerous gain-of-function research as well as receiving untold amounts of royalties. Senator Paul wrote an op-ed for The Hill in March, calling the NIH a “den of cronyism.” Paul referred to a report by Open the Books that revealed 2,400 NIH scientists received a total of $325 million in royalties over a decade. That is an average of $135,000 per person.

Senator Paul said he confronted Dr. Fauci about the royalty payments made directly from vaccine manufacturers to members of vaccine approval committees. Dr. Fauci said the law protects scientists from having to disclose royalties. Moderna paid the NIH and two universities $400 million, which Senator Paul identifies as a conflict of interest.

“The NIH’s potential profit from future royalties on Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is the icing on this conflict-of-interest cake, raising grave concerns about the integrity of our regulatory processes,” Paul wrote. “This is not merely about financial transparency; it is about ensuring public health decisions are made in the American people’s best interest, untainted by the prospect of financial gain.”

Senator Paul congratulated Bhattacharya on his nomination with a post on X. He wrote, “I have no doubt you can lead the bipartisan reform the NIH needs.”

The media reports about Bhattacharya refer to him as a “lockdown skeptic” and promoter of natural immunity. Meanwhile, The New York Times published an op-ed that Data Scientist Kevin Bass said contains misinformation. The NY Times piece claims that Bhattacharya said COVID-19 would “likely kill about 20,000 to 40,000 Americans.”

Bass provides the source of this claim from Bhattacharya’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Bhattacharya refers to a flawed data model that suggested two to four million Americans would die from the virus. He provided a low-end estimate that could occur with a similar “selection bias in testing.” Bass argues that Bhattacharya never made a specific claim about the number of Americans who would die from the pandemic and that he was illustrating the flawed data and selection bias with hypothetical numbers.

The NY Times article states that Bhattacharya said, “Vaccinating the whole population can cause great harm.” Bass said the NY Times article suggested that Bhattacharya was saying the vaccines were harmful. However, Bhattacharya was saying there wouldn’t be enough doses for elderly citizens in India to receive the vaccine if they continue to vaccinate those who have obtained natural immunity.

Rachel Maddow, an anchor on MSNBC, said Bhattacharya “endorsed ‘herd immunity’ as the best way to address the COVID pandemic. Just a fancy way of saying, ‘Let’s get everybody sick and see what happens. Cull the weak, cull the elderly.’” Bhattacharya responded to Maddow’s statement, saying that the MSNBC host was lying about the Great Barrington Declaration. “It advocated for focused protection of the elderly and vulnerable,” Bhattacharya wrote. “It’s the lockdown strategy she espoused that led to the ‘culling’ of children, of the poor, and the vulnerable. Has she ever heard of Sweden?”

Tracy Beanz reported about Missouri v. Biden for The HighWire last year, which involved social media censorship at the behest of the federal government. Bhattacharya was among the plaintiffs in the suit and among those who were censored for sharing information that challenged the guidance of public health agencies and officials. That case eventually became Murthy v Missouri and lost in the Supreme Court on a legal issue called standing. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote, “To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek. Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”

Kennedy, Senator Paul, and others have expressed enthusiasm for Bhattacharya’s new role in the Trump administration. Despite being denigrated by former public health officials, including Fauci and Collins, and censored by social media companies under federal government pressure, Bhattacharya will now serve as Director of the NIH.