The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions voted Thursday morning to lead Dr. Jay Batacharya of the National Institutes of Health to advance President Donald Trump's pick.
The votes were strictly along the party line, with 12 votes in favor and 11 against 11, but Bhatacharya set sail to the finish line with GOP support alone as the committee has one additional Republican in a majority. Bhattacharya is currently heading to the full Senate for an imminent confirmation vote that will be the final hurdle before becoming the next director of the NIH.
I-Vt. Sen. Bernie Sanders of the company raised concerns Thursday, saying she feared that Bhatacharya would not be enough to cut the costs of prescription drugs. Sanders and other Democrats have also expressed concern about how Bhatacharya will approach NIH medical research.
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Bhatacharya, a doctor, professor of medicine at Stanford and senior fellow at the University Institute of Economic Policy, was the key voice during the Covid-19 pandemic against lockdown measures and vaccine orders.
Jayanta Bhattacharya will speak at a confirmation hearing at Capitol Hill's Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on March 5, 2025. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Bhattacharya was investigated by the Senate Aid Committee about a week ago on various issues related to his potential role as NIH director. But many of the hearings he was forced to defend the president's decision to place 15% Indirect research costs upper limit Distributed by the NIH.
Bhattacharya never explicitly said that he opposed the cut or that if it was confirmed, he would intervene to them to stop them. Rather, he said he would “follow the law,” but also said he would investigate the impact of the cut and ensure that all NIH researchers who advance American health outcomes have the necessary resources.
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In addition to addressing questions about playing cards cuts, Bhatacharya also laid out what he called a new decentralized vision for the future Research at NIH He said his goal is to embrace dissent and transparency, focusing on research topics that are most likely to directly benefit American health outcomes. Bhattacharya added that he would like to remove the research portfolio of other “frivolous” efforts agents who say he does little to benefit directly from health outcomes.
“What's fundamentally important is that scientists have the idea of advancing the scientific field they are in?” Bhattacharya said last week in a confirmation testimony. “They are Health needs American? ”
Jayanta Bhattacharya testified before the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions appointed NIH Director at Capitol Hill on March 5, 2025 (Getty Images)
Bhattacharya was co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a document published in October 2020 by a group of scientists advocating alternative approaches to dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. It mainly opposes widespread lockdowns, promoting the efficacy of innate immunity against the virus in low-risk individuals, suggesting that vaccines may not be the best course of action for anyone.
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Before the confirmation hearing, Bhatacharya launched a new research journal focusing on the promotion of scientific discourse and the fight against “gatekeeping” in the medical research community, several other scientists, including Trump's election, which leads the Food and Drug Administration. The journal is The Journal of the Academy of Public Health (JAPH), which aims to promote scientific discourse by publishing peer reviews of prominent research from other journals that do not publish peer reviews.
