A medical school professor who opposed lockdown measures during the COVID-19 pandemic was nominated on the 26th (local time) as the next head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which oversees public health and biomedical research in the United States.
On the same day, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Professor Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University as the director of the NIH. The NIH, a medical research institution under the Department of Health and Human Services, directs and supports biomedical research related to the treatment and prevention of various diseases. Born in India, Professor Bhattacharya earned both a medical doctorate and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.
He became globally known starting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because he voiced opposition to lockdown measures and mandatory mask-wearing for disease control.
In 2020, he and fellow researchers issued an online petition called the so-called "Great Barrington Declaration," advocating for the eradication of COVID-19 through herd immunity. The declaration argued that maintaining COVID-19 lockdown policies causes significant harm to socioeconomically vulnerable groups and reduces access to healthcare. At that time, organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) criticized Professor Bhattacharya's claims as unhelpful in overcoming the pandemic.
However, the New York Times (NYT) reported that following the end of the pandemic, as adolescent mental health issues have come to the forefront, a reevaluation of his stance is also taking place. President-elect Trump stated on the social networking service (SNS) Truth Social, "He (Professor Bhattacharya), along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, will do their best to make America healthy again."
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