Trump’s choice for NIH director deletes the first obstacle before the final confirmation vote

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Work and Pensions (Help) voted Thursday morning to advance the election of President Donald Trump to direct the National Health Institutes, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

The vote was strictly along the party lines, 12 votes in favor and 11 against, but with the committee with an additional republican member in most, Bhattacharya sailed to the finish line with only republican support. Bhattacharya now goes to the entire Senate for an imminent confirmation vote that will be the last obstacle before becoming the next NIH director.

Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT., Expressed concern on Thursday for the confirmation of Bhattacharya, saying that he feared that Bhattacharya did not do enough to help reduce the cost of prescription medications. Sanders and other Democrats have also expressed concern about how Bhattacharya will address medical research at NIH, especially considering that Trump only imposed a limit on the facilities and administration costs associated with the NIH research subsidies.

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Bhattacharya, Stanford Medicine Professor, Medicine Professor and Principal Member of the University’s Economic Policies Research Institute, was a main voice during the COVID-19 pandemic against blocking measures and vaccines mandates.

Jayanta Bhattacharya, candidate of President Donald Trump, will be director of the National Institutes of Health, speaks at his confirmation hearing before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions of the Senate in Capitol Hill on March 5, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo of Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Bhattacharya was tested by the Senate’s Help Committee approximately a week ago on several issues related to its potential role as NiH director; However, much of the hearing that was forced to defend the president’s decision to put 15% Indirect research cost limit dispersed by the NIH.

Bhattacharya would not explicitly say that I did not agree with the cuts, or that, if confirmed, it would intervene to stop them. Rather, he said that “the law would continue”, while investigating the impact of the cuts and guarantees that each NIH researcher who does a job that advances the health results of Americans has the necessary resources.

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In addition to addressing questions about Trump’s cuts, Bhattacharya also presented what he called a new decentralized vision for the future Nih research That said it will be aimed at adopting dissident ideas and transparency, while focusing on research issues that have the best opportunity to directly benefit the health results of Americans. Bhattacharya added that he wants to free the research portfolio of the agency of other “frivolous” efforts that says that he is recently benefiting from health results.

“I think that fundamentally what matters is: do scientists have an idea that advances the scientific field in which they are?” Bhattacharya said last week during his confirmation testimony. “Do you have an idea that ends up addressing the health needs of Americans? “

Jayanta Bhattacharya testifies during a health, education, work and pensions committee of the United States on their nomination to be director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Capitol Hill in Washington DC, on March 5, 2025.

Bhattacharya was remarkably co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which was a document published in October 2020 for a group of scientists advocating an alternative approach to handle Covid-19 pandemic. He largely argued against generalized blockages and promoted the effectiveness of natural immunity to virus for low -risk individuals, suggesting that the vaccine may not be the best course of action for all.

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Before its confirmation hearings, Bhattacharya, along with several other scientists, including Trump’s choice to direct the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary, launched a new research magazine Focused on stimulating scientific discourse and the combination of “guard” in the medical research community. The magazine, entitled The Journal of the Academy of Public Health (Japh), is implementing a novel approach aimed at stimulating scientific discourse through the publication of revisions by pairs of prominent studies of other magazines that do not make their revisions by pairs publicly available.