The 2022 «Twitter Files» exposé revealed that Twitter secretly added Bhattacharya to a «Trends Blacklist,» blocking his tweets from trending due to his opinions on the pandemic.
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that Jay Bhattacharya will take on the role of director of the National Institutes of Health during Trump’s upcoming second term in office. Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University and a staunch critic of lockdown during the pandemic, will oversee the federal government’s medical research initiatives.
He will work «in cooperation» with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the incoming Secretary of Health and Human Services, in running the country’s top public funder of medical research with a budget of around $47.3 billion. The Stanford physician and economist, met with Kennedy earlier this week and impressed him with his ideas and proposals to reform the NIH.
Biden’s Critic Becomes Trump’s Pick
«Jay co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an alternative to lockdowns proposed in October 2020», Trump said in his statement, referring to the open letter urging government leaders and public health officials to reconsider stringent Covid-19 measures.
Bhattacharya has advocated for shifting the agency’s priorities to support more groundbreaking research while limiting the sway of some of its most senior career officials, the report said.
