washington
\nPresident-elect Donald Trump has decided to appoint Dr Jay Bhattacharya as the next director of the National Institute of Health (NIH).
\nAnnouncing the new appointment, Trump wrote in a statement: \u201cTogether, Jay and RFK Jr will restore the NIH to the Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of and solutions to America\u2019s biggest health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease. Together, they will work hard to Make America Healthy Again!\u201d
\nA Stanford University health researcher, Bhattacharya is widely known for his opposition to the lockdown when COVID-19 made its wave in the US, according to NPR.
\nHe co-authored the \u201cGreat Barrington Declaration\u201d, an open declaration of opposing the widespread lockdowns and asked for focused protection for vulnerable groups such as the elderly.
\nHis nomination requires Senate confirmation, and if he earns it, he will take charge of an institution that has more than 18,000 workers and funds nearly $48 billion for scientific research through over 50,000 grants to more than 300,000 researchers in over 2,500 educational institutes.
\nIt is evident that Bhattacharya will hold significant power and could affect the future of medical science. His nomination has been denounced by several public health experts, including a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, Angela Rasmussen.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t think that Jay Bhattacharya belongs anywhere near the NIH, much less in the director\u2019s office,\u201d she said.
\n\u201cThat would be absolutely disastrous for the health and well-being of the American public and actually the world,\u201d she added.
\nNIH is also threatened by Trump as during his first term in the White House, he had proposed cutting the agency\u2019s budget. It also came under heavy opposition during the COVID pandemic from some Republicans towards long-serving NIH officials like Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Francis Collins who was director of NIH from 2009 to 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
washington President-elect Donald Trump has decided to appoint Dr Jay Bhattacharya as the next director of the National Institute of Health (NIH). Announcing the new appointment, Trump wrote in a statement: \u201cTogether, Jay and RFK Jr will restore the NIH to the Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":73437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73447,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73429\/revisions\/73447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}