US Senate appoints Indian-Origin Jay Bhattacharya as director of NIH
Washington, DC: The selection of Stanford School of Medicine professor Jay Bhattacharya, who is of Indian descent, as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was approved by the US Senate on Tuesday (local time).
In the first session of the roll call vote in the 119th Congress, Bhattacharya prevailed 53-47, according to the US Senate’s official website.
Bhattacharya is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, according to a previous nomination statement from US President Donald Trump.
His study highlights the importance of government initiatives, biological innovation, and economics. He also serves as the director of Stanford’s Centre for Demography and Economics of Health and Ageing.
Jay is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which was put out in October 2020 as an alternative to lockdowns. Journals in the fields of economics, statistics, law, medicine, public health, and health policy have all published his peer-reviewed work.
The statement went on to say that Bhattacharya and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the recently nominated US Health and Human Services Secretary, would collaborate to turn the NIH back into a “gold standard of medical research.”
Mitch McConnell, a US Republican senator from Kentucky, congratulated Bhattacharya on his nomination as the director of the NIH and said he will provide the organization “sound leadership.”
“Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s appointment as head of the National Institutes of Health was confirmed by a vote today. Talking to X, McConnell said, “I expect Dr. J Bhattacharya to provide sound leadership at the NIH, given his extensive background in medical research.”
The US Senate confirmed anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services earlier in February. By a vote of 52-48, he was confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States.
