Jay Bhattacharya Outlines Vision For New NIH Amid Agency Disruptions

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health testified before a Senate committee Wednesday about using taxpayer funding for useful medical research and improving transparency at the National Institutes of Health — but faced bipartisan questions opposed to disruptive change.

Jay Bhattacharya, professor of health policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and outlined his vision for the future of the institutes. The vision called for less waste and fraud, a renewed focus on practical applications for human health and more tolerance for disagreement in order to reestablish trust lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I love the NIH. But post-pandemic, American biomedical sciences are at a crossroads,” he said.

Bhattacharya stressed five priorities: Focusing on chronic disease; tackling the reproducibility crisis in science; establishing a culture of free speech and diversity of viewpoints; recommitting to innovative breakthroughs over incremental progress by powerful incumbent scientists; and introducing regulation of risky research that poses the risk of a pandemic.

Bhattacharya first rose to prominence with the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, a statement that broke with NIH in calling for “focused protection” against COVID-19 that would allow low-risk individuals to live their lives normally while safeguarding high-risk populations. Former NIH Director Francis Collins privately called for aggressively combatting this stance. Bhattacharya has challenged the U.S. government for its efforts in collaboration with social media companies to throttle alternative points of view during the COVID-19 pandemic.The hearing was not trouble-free for Bhattacharya, who faced terse questions not only from Democrats but also from Republican Chair Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

Cassidy was a critic of Bhattacharya’s would-be boss Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s prior statements on the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. His stance on Kennedy’s nomination remained in doubt right up until the committee vote, though he eventually broke in favor of his confirmation.

Cassidy directed pointed questions to Bhattacharya about the MMR vaccine. Cassidy expressed concerns that confidence in the vaccine could be set back by continuing to study it and expressed opposition to applying “precious limited taxpayer dollars” to the matter.

Bhattacharya said that he was convinced that there was no link between autism and the MMR vaccine while emphasizing the need for “good data.”

“As far as research on autism and vaccines, I don’t generally believe there is a link based on my reading of the literature, but what I have seen is that there is tremendous distrust in medicine and science coming out of the pandemic, and we do have, as you know Senator, a sharp rise in autism rates in this country,” Bhattacharya said. “I don’t know, and I don’t think any scientist knows the cause of it. So I would support … a broad scientific agenda based on data to get an answer to that.”

“But this has been fairly well, in fact it has been exhaustively studied, and there’s limited resources,” Cassidy retorted. “And if we keep ploughing over ground that has been ploughed over, knowing you can never prove a negative, and since we don’t know the cause [of autism] we still have a problem. We’ve got a responsibility with limited resources.”

The gentlemen did not appear to reach an agreement.

But Cassidy also expressed optimism about Bhattacharya’s ability to reinvigorate NIH research.

“There is concern that the current system incentives established scientists who study already proven concepts rather than younger scientists who have unproven ideas that have potential to be major medical breakthroughs,” said Cassidy.

Bhattacharya also faced heated questions from Democrats and Republicans alike about the recent disruptions at to the institutes, including a new cap on the proportion of funding universities and labs can skim off the top of NIH grants at 15%; the firing of NIH probationary employees; and a pause to NIH study sections, which was partially lifted last week.

Collins expressed strong opposition to the cap on so-called “indirects.”

“I think it’s important that we all acknowledge that a one-sized fits all approach does not make sense. That’s why NIH negotiates with the individual grant recipients on what the indirects should be,” Collins said. “To impose this arbitrary cap makes no sense at all. It’s also important to emphasize that this is illegal. Since 2017 we have had language in the [Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act] that specifically prohibits the indirect cost formula from being changed.”

A U.S. district judge extended a temporary restraining order on the cap in response to lawsuits filed by attorneys general and universities on Feb. 21.

Bhattacharya said he would follow the law but also suggested that universities’ use of indirect funds, which are not publicly reported, should be subject to public scrutiny.

“If confirmed I absolutely commit to following the law,” he said. “This is one of those issues that, to me, is an indicator of distrust of universities and the scientific process, so I want to address those as well.”

Bhattacharya emphasized that he supports the work of NIH scientists and the mission of improving Americans’ health. But Bhattacharya repeatedly stressed his view that this mission has been adrift in recent years.

Bhattacharya and Republican senators cited the apparent lack of progress on Alzheimer’s disease as an example. A fraudulent 2006 Alzheimer’s research paper that served as a touchstone for the predominant “amyloid cascade” hypothesis of the disease was retracted in 2024 after being cited hundreds of times.

Over the last twenty years, despite a surge in NIH funding, Alzheimer’s deaths have doubled, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Bhattacharya said he plans to introduce regulations of gain-of-function research that generates novel pandemic-capable viruses — something virologists and NIH leadership has resisted for years.

Bhattacharya called the stigmatization of public discussion of NIH-supported coronavirus research conducted in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — aided by Collins and longtime Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease Anthony Fauci via a March 2020 paper in Nature Medicine — a “low point in the history of science.”

“The net effect of this was a tremendous loss in confidence by the American people in NIH and in our public health officials. You and I have talked about the vital need to restore some of that credibility. Talk to us about how you see going about doing that,” said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.

“That episode is a low point in the history of science,” Bhattacharya said. “The top officials at the NIH abused their positions to hide their support for research that may have caused the pandemic. And I am committed to making sure that all of the activities of the NIH, not just backwards but going forward, are transparent and open to the American people and to Congress.”