President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Jay Bhattacharya as the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), reported Hindustan Times.
Bhattacharya, an economist from Kolkata who studied medicine at Stanford University, was a vocal critic of US' COVID-19 policies.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhattacharya, along with two other scholars, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, which advocated for returning to normal life for individuals who are not at high risk from the virus.
Bhattacharya later filed a lawsuit against the government, alleging that it pressured social media platforms to censor his views, as per reports.
Bhattacharya's role
He will now lead the NIH, the main US public body funding medical research, which operates with a budget of 47.3 billion dollars.
As NIH director, Bhattacharya will oversee 27 institutes and centres dedicated to early-stage research, ranging from emerging pandemic vaccines to new drug targets.
A glorious background...
He graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1997 and earned his PhD in economics from Stanford in 2000.
A research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Bhattacharya also serves as the director of Stanford's Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Ageing.
Jay Bhattacharya's research focuses on the health of vulnerable populations, exploring the roles of government programmes, biomedical innovation, and economics.
His recent work includes studying COVID-19 epidemiology and evaluating pandemic policy responses. He also investigates the effects of population ageing on health spending, physician performance linked to payment systems, and the impact of biomedical innovation on health.
On November 14, Donald Trump nominated Robert F Kennedy Jr as the next United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). The decision also came under scrutiny for Kennedy's redundant views on health and related matters.
