Jay Bhattacharya

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Jay Bhattacharya
File:Jay Bhattacharya, official portrait (2025) (cropped).jpg


Official portrait, 2025

Office 18th Director of the National Institutes of Health
Office Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention




Term start April 1, 2025


Predecessor Monica Bertagnolli


Predecessor Jim O'Neill




Born Template:Birth year and age
Born Kolkata, India











Jayanta Bhattacharya (born 1968) is an American health economist,[1][2] trained as a physician,[3][4] who has served as the 18th director of the National Institutes of Health since 2025. Bhattacharya additionally served as the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from February to March 2026.

Bhattacharya earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. He does not practice medicine but specializes in health economics.[2] Bhattacharya was a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University until March 2025, when he left his position and became an emeritus professor so that he could start his position at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also was an investigator at Stanford's Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging whose research focused on the economics of health care.[5][6][7] In November 2024, President Donald Trump named Bhattacharya as his choice to lead the NIH,[8] and he was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 25, 2025.[9]

Bhattacharya is the first Indian American to lead the NIH.[10] He opposed the lockdowns and mask mandates imposed in 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[11][12] With Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta, he was a co-author in 2020 of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups to develop herd immunity through widespread infection, while promoting the fringe notion that vulnerable people could be simultaneously protected from the virus.[13]

Early life and education

Bhattacharya was born in 1968 in Kolkata, India, to a Bengali Hindu family.[14][15] He later became a naturalized American citizen.[16]

Bhattacharya graduated with honors from Stanford University with both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree in economics in 1990, earning membership in Phi Beta Kappa. While in college, he converted to Christianity.[17] He then simultaneously pursued a medical degree and a doctorate in economics at Stanford, earning his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1997 and his Ph.D. from Stanford in economics, econometrics, and health economics in 2000.[7][18] His doctoral dissertation, "Lifetime returns to specialization in medicine", was supervised by professor Thomas MaCurdy.[19]

Career

Bhattacharya began his career at the RAND Corporation as an economist (1998–2001), while simultaneously serving as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Economics at UCLA.[6][11] He later held a research fellowship at the Hoover Institution from 2006 to 2008.

At Stanford University, Bhattacharya held multiple academic appointments. He served as a professor of medicine, with courtesy professorships in both economics and health research and policy. He was also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and directed Stanford's Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. Additionally, he maintains positions as a senior fellow by courtesy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and as a research associate at both Acumen LLC and the National Bureau of Economic Research.[6][18]

His research has focused on population health and well-being, with particular attention to the impact of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economic factors.[6][7]

COVID-19 pandemic

Template:Further Template:Close paraphrasing Bhattacharya was an early opponent of lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and questioned the severity of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19.[11]

On March 24, 2020, Bhattacharya co-wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal entitled "Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?" that argued there was little evidence to support shelter-in-place orders and quarantines of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.[20] Bhattacharya was a lead author of a serology study released in April 2020 that suggested that as many as 80,000 residents of Santa Clara County, California, might have already been infected with SARS-CoV-2.[21] The study's design, conduct, statistical analysis, and conclusions were widely criticized as flawed.[22][23][24] JetBlue's former owner David Neeleman contributed $5,000 to Stanford University for the research, according to a whistleblower report; however, the researchers said they had no knowledge of this funding.[25][26]

He is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter claiming that COVID-19 lockdowns could be avoided via the fringe notion of "focused protection". In it, Bhattacharya and the two other authors thought the virus should be allowed to spread among healthy people, with the aim of achieving herd immunity.[27] Bhattacharya wrote the declaration with Martin Kulldorff, at the time a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University. It was published on 5 October 2020.[28][29]

In October 2020, the World Health Organization's Director General said that pursuing herd immunity before vaccination would be "scientifically and ethically problematic" and "allowing a dangerous virus that we don't fully understand to run free is simply unethical."[30][31] In an interview, Bhattacharya said he hoped the declaration would prompt a dialogue about the benefits and harms of public health interventions.[32][33][34] In October 2020, Bhattacharya, Kulldorff and Gupta met with U.S. President Donald Trump's health officials about the declaration.[35][36]

At the beginning of 2021, Bhattacharya wrote an op-ed in favor of reserving initially limited vaccine supplies in India for patients who had not been previously infected with COVID-19.[37] In March 2021, Bhattacharya called the COVID-19 lockdowns the "biggest public health mistake we've ever made" and argued that "The harm to people is catastrophic".[38] In May 2021, Bhattacharya was called as an expert witness for ten applicants who filed a constitutional challenge against Manitoba's COVID-19 public health orders.[39] The judge determined that the public health restrictions did not violate charter rights, noting that most scientific and medical experts did not support Bhattacharya's views.[40] In April, Bhattacharya participated in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' roundtable about "Big Tech censorship and the COVID-19 pandemic".[41] In August, Bhattacharya provided testimony in defense of Florida's ban on mask mandates.[42] The judge ruled against the Florida ban and said that the state's medical experts "are in a distinct minority among doctors and scientists".[43] Bhattacharya publicly opposed COVID-19 vaccine passports and mandates, although he called the vaccines successful.[44][45] In December, with Kulldorff and Scott Atlas, Bhattacharya helped found a program called Academy for Science and Freedom at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian liberal arts school.[46] Peter Thiel and Elon Musk have expressed support for Bhattacharya.[47]

In a 2021 case about masks in Tennessee schools, judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee criticized Bhattacharya's testimony as "troubling and problematic", said Bhattacharya had oversimplified conclusions of a study, and said he "offered opinions regarding the pediatric effects of masks on children, a discipline on which he admitted he was not qualified to speak."[48] He was also named a senior scholar at the Brownstone Institute, a new think tank launched by Jeffrey Tucker that published articles opposing various measures against COVID-19; Kulldorff and Gupta, his co-authors on the Great Barrington Declaration, have also had roles there.[49]

In April 2022, Bhattacharya wrote that he experienced racist attacks and death threats during the pandemic. He alleged that "Big tech outlets like Facebook and Google" suppressed "our ideas, falsely deeming them 'misinformation'". He wrote that "I started getting calls from reporters asking me why I wanted to 'let the virus rip,' when I had proposed nothing of the sort."[50] Also in April, in response to California proposing a bill that would discipline physicians for promoting or spreading false information about COVID-19, Bhattacharya said that the bill could turn "doctors into agents of state public health rather than advocates for their patients".[51] In December 2022, Florida governor Ron DeSantis named Bhattacharya, Kulldorff and several others to his newly formed Public Health Integrity Committee to "offer critical assessments" of recommendations from federal health agencies.[52] Later in 2022, when COVID boosters for the Omicron variant were available, Bhattacharya made multiple misleading statements about them, including incorrectly describing how they were tested.[53]

According to a December 2022 release of the Twitter Files, Bhattacharya was placed on a Twitter "Trends blacklist" in August 2021 that prevented his tweets from showing up in trending topics searches. It coincided with his first tweet on the service, which advocated for the Great Barrington Declaration's herd immunity proposal.[54][55]

File:AmericaFest 2025 - Jay Bhattacharya 02.jpg
Bhattacharya at AmericaFest 2025

In June 2024, Bhattacharya was listed as a plaintiff on the U.S. Supreme Court case Murthy v. Missouri but ultimately lost the case due to lack of legal standing.[56] Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the majority, stating "plaintiffs failed to show a concrete link between the restrictions that they alleged and conduct of government officials".[57]

NIH director

File:JayBhattacharya.png
Bhattacharya at his confirmation hearing

On November 26, 2024, Trump named Bhattacharya as the director of the National Institutes of Health.[8][58] His goals included withholding research grants from institutions that are not aligned with conservative views.[59][60][61] His nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 25, 2025 on a party- line vote, 53 to 47.[9]

Among the first major actions taken as NIH director was eliminating subcontracting with foreign researchers on May 1, 2025. Rather than subcontracting, the new policy required foreign researchers to have a direct contract with the NIH.[62] In a change of NIH policy, no existing NIH awards to domestic institutions would be continued past the current year of funding if any foreign funding was included as a foreign subcontract.[62] This annual extension of current awards is termed a "non-competing continuation". No new awards would be given this fiscal year that included foreign funding via a subcontract.

Bhattacharya subsequently introduced and championed the Trump administration HHS gender dysphoria report written by the Department of Health and Human Services in compliance with Executive Order 14187, which made it illegal for the federal government to advocate in favor of gender-affirming care under the age of 19. The report contradicted the consensus of the mainstream medical community, instead advocating for conversion therapy as the primary means of treatment for transgender youth.[63][64][65]

On February 18, 2026, Bhattacharya was concurrently appointed Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.[66]

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ Trump's nominee to run NIH faces Senate scrutiny(March 5, 2025). Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Trump nominates Jay Bhattacharya to head US National Institutes of Health. BMJ({Template:Date).
  3. ↑ Trump picks an 'outsider' and NIH critic to lead agency. Science({Template:Date).
  4. ↑ Science. AAAS. Retrieved 2026-02-24.
  5. ↑ Profile: Jayanta Bhattacharya. Stanford University.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD. Stanford Health Policy. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Jay Bhattacharya on Understanding the COVID-19 Virus, Jones, Kara. Freopp(11 August 2020). Retrieved 16 November 2020.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Trump Picks Stanford Physician Who Opposed Lockdowns to Head N.I.H.. The New York Times(26 November 2024). Retrieved 2024-11-26.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Senate confirms Trump's nominee to run NIH, Weixel, Nathaniel. The Hill(March 25, 2025). Retrieved March 25, 2025.
  10. ↑ Jay Bhattacharya makes history as first Indian-American NIH Director under Trump. Business Line(27 November 2024). Retrieved 12 April 2025.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Who Are the Scientists Behind the Great Barrington Declaration?, D'Ambrosio, Amanda. www.medpagetoday.com(October 19, 2020). Retrieved 2021-08-25.
  12. ↑ As Covid-19 cases surge in Florida, governor says parents should decide whether their children wear masks to school, Maxouris, Christina. CNN(31 July 2021). Retrieved 2021-08-25.
  13. ↑ Kennedy Announces Eight New Members of C.D.C. Vaccine Advisory Panel. The New York Times(2025-06-11). Retrieved 2025-06-19.
  14. ↑ Jay Bhattacharya, Born In Kolkata, Emerges As Trump's Top Pick To Head US Health Agency, Nath, Sanstuti. NDTV 24x7(November 24, 2024). Retrieved 2024-11-24.
  15. ↑ জয়ন্ত থেকে 'জে' হয়েও ভোলেননি বাংলা, Paul, Prakash. Anandabazar Patrika(29 November 2024). Retrieved 24 January 2024.
  16. ↑ Template:Cite tweet
  17. ↑ A faithful presence in national healthcare. WORLD Magazine(5 December 2024). Retrieved 12 April 2025.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D.. cap.stanford.edu. Stanford University. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  19. ↑ Lifetime returns to specialization in medicine, Bhattacharya, Jayanta. Stanford University(2000). Retrieved 30 March 2025.
  20. ↑ Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say. The Wall Street Journal(24 March 2020). Retrieved 31 December 2021.
  21. ↑ Template:Cite magazine
  22. ↑ A Stanford Professor's Wife Recruited People For His Coronavirus Study By Claiming It Would Reveal If They Could "Return To Work Without Fear", Lee, Stephanie M.. BuzzFeed News(April 27, 2020). Retrieved 2024-11-29.
  23. ↑ Angry statisticians dispute Santa Clara County research that found high infection rates. The Mercury News(21 April 2020).
  24. ↑ Stanford coronavirus research: Did politically-motivated scientists hype their speedy study?. The Mercury News(24 May 2020).
  25. ↑ Who Are the Scientists Behind the Great Barrington Declaration?(19 October 2020). Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  26. ↑ JetBlue's Founder Helped Fund A Stanford Study That Said The Coronavirus Wasn't That Deadly. BuzzFeed News(15 May 2020). Retrieved 6 June 2021.
  27. ↑ As Covid-19 cases surge in Florida, governor says parents should decide whether their children wear masks to school, Maxouris, Christina. CNN(31 July 2021). Retrieved 2021-08-25.
  28. ↑ Epidemiologists Stray From the Covid Herd, Varadarajan, Tunku. The Wall Street Journal(23 October 2020). Retrieved 10 November 2020.
  29. ↑ Scientists call for Covid herd immunity strategy for young, Sample, Ian. The Guardian(6 October 2020). Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  30. ↑ WHO chief says herd immunity approach to pandemic 'unethical'. The Guardian(12 October 2020). Retrieved October 12, 2020.
  31. ↑ WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19. World Health Organization(12 October 2020).
  32. ↑ Covid-19: Group of UK and US experts argues for "focused protection" instead of lockdowns. BMJ({Template:Date).
  33. ↑ Great Barrington declaration and petition. Great Barrington Declaration Website(4 October 2020). Retrieved 10 November 2020.
  34. ↑ Stanford professor's anti-lockdown movement faces fierce resistance, Moffitt, Mike. sfgate(13 October 2020). Retrieved 10 November 2020.
  35. ↑ Trump health official meets with doctors pushing herd immunity. The Hill(10 May 2020). Retrieved 10 November 2020.
  36. ↑ Template:Cite podcast
  37. ↑ Majority Indians have natural immunity. Vaccinating entire population can cause great harm. ThePrint(January 11, 2021). Retrieved November 28, 2024.
  38. ↑ Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford doctor, calls lockdowns the 'biggest public health mistake we've ever made'. Newsweek(2021-03-08). Retrieved 2021-04-05.
  39. ↑ Vocal critic of pandemic lockdowns defends stance in Manitoba court case. CTV News Winnipeg(2021-05-04). Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  40. ↑ Manitoba judge rules pandemic restrictions didn't violate charter rights. Morning News(October 22, 2021). Retrieved October 25, 2021.
  41. ↑ Those who penned Great Barrington Declaration a year after it sparked worldwide firestorm: 'This is our crucible', Bellow, Heather. The Berkshire Eagle(6 October 2021). Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  42. ↑ State pleads case in school masking trial, Stofan, Jake. Capitol News Service(August 25, 2021). Retrieved 2021-08-25.
  43. ↑ Judge blocks Florida governor's order banning mask mandates. Associated Press(August 27, 2021). Retrieved October 25, 2021.
  44. ↑ Florida won't require COVID-19 'vaccine passports,' governor says, Cutway, Adrienne. WKMG(2021-03-18). Retrieved 2021-08-27.
  45. ↑ Stanford doc Jay Bhattacharya calls vaccine mandates "unethical," says patients can choose. Newsweek(July 21, 2021). Retrieved August 27, 2021.
  46. ↑ How the Koch Network Is Spreading COVID Misinformation. Jacobin(2021-12-22). Retrieved 2022-01-08.
  47. ↑ He rose to fame as a Covid contrarian, and Trump wants him to be NIH head, Butler, Kiera. Mother Jones. Retrieved November 28, 2024.
  48. ↑ Gov. Bill Lee's mask order violates federal law, remains blocked in Williamson County, judge rules. Nashville Tennessean(October 22, 2021). Retrieved October 25, 2021.
  49. ↑ New Institute Has Ties to the Great Barrington Declaration, D'Ambrosio, Amanda. www.medpagetoday.com(2021-11-11). Retrieved 2021-11-27.
  50. ↑ Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: How To Avoid 'Absolutely Catastrophic' COVID Mistakes. Reason.com(20 April 2022). Retrieved 2022-04-21.
  51. ↑ California wants to listen in at your next doctor's appointment, Høeg, Tracy Beth. SFGATE(2022-04-28). Retrieved 2022-05-19.
  52. ↑ DeSantis announces grand jury to investigate 'wrongdoing' around COVID-19 vaccines, Catherman, Caroline. Orlando Sentinel(2022-12-13). Retrieved 2022-12-13.
  53. ↑ The truth about those viral Tweets questioning the Omicron boosters' safety, Butler, Kiera. Mother Jones. Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  54. ↑ Why the Twitter Files actually matter, Prokop, Andrew. Vox(2022-12-15). Retrieved 2022-12-28.
  55. ↑ Stanford anti-lockdown professor Jay Bhattacharya secretly blacklisted on Twitter, new leak shows. The Telegraph(2022-12-09). Retrieved 2022-12-28.
  56. ↑ Murthy v. Missouri. SCOTUSblog. Retrieved 2024-11-27.
  57. ↑ Unpacking the Supreme Court's Punt on Alleged Government 'Coercion' of Social Media Companies: What Murthy v. Missouri Did and Did Not Say, Weissmann, Andrew. Just Security(2024-06-27). Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  58. ↑ Trump picks Jay Bhattacharya, who backed COVID herd immunity, to lead National Institutes of Health, Johnson, Carla K.. AP News(2024-11-27). Retrieved 2024-11-27.
  59. ↑ Trump's team looking at withholding massive research grants from 'woke' schools. The Independent(December 6, 2024). Retrieved 2026-02-19.
  60. ↑ Exclusive | The Trump NIH Pick Who Wants to Take On 'Cancel Culture' Colleges, Whyte, Liz Essley. WSJ(December 6, 2024). Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  61. ↑ Who is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya? Trump's pick to lead the NIH faces Senate confirmation hearing. NBC News(March 4, 2025). Retrieved 2026-02-19.
  62. ↑ 62.0 62.1 NOT-OD-25-104. Updated NIH Policy on Foreign Subawards, NIH. NIH(May 1, 2025). Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  63. ↑ Concern after HHS report advocates for therapy for trans kids over gender-affirming care. ABC News(May 2, 2025). Retrieved 2026-02-07.
  64. ↑ Template:Cite magazine
  65. ↑ US health agency's 'review' advocates for therapy for youth gender dysphoria. The Guardian(May 1, 2025). Retrieved 2026-02-07.
  66. ↑ N.I.H. Director Will Temporarily Run C.D.C. in Leadership Shake-Up. The New York Times(2026-02-18). Retrieved 2026-02-19.

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