Trump's nominee for NIH chief talks frozen grants and fostering ‘scientific dissent’
Nature News
Trump's nominee for NIH chief talks frozen grants and fostering ‘scientific dissent’
During his confirmation hearing before the Senate, Bhattacharya, who is a health economist at Stanford University in California, also seemed to distance himself from the recent turmoil at the agency. Grant processing has largely ground to a halt, and roughly 1,200 of the NIH’s 20,000 staffers were fired in mid-February. “I wasn’t involved in the personnel decisions to date,” he said, when asked about the firings. But he did not commit to rehiring those who have lost their jobs.
“I thought that he came across as very reasonable,” said Carole LaBonne, a stem cell biologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The exception, she said, was Bhattacharya’s discussion of COVID-19 ― a topic that has divided him from many scientists because of his views on lockdowns and COVID-19 vaccines.
“What I was most disturbed by during the hearing was that the topic of basic science didn’t come up,” LaBonne added. That omission led her to worry that the economist does not understand its importance, she said.
Tumultuous times
If confirmed, Bhattacharya will helm an agency with a budget of roughly $47 billion, making it the world’s biggest funder of biomedical research.
But since Trump, a Republican, took office in January, there has been a sharp decline in new research grants awarded, leaving many scientists in limbo. Trump officials have also used procedural maneuvers to prevent grant-review meetings from taking place, and the agency announced on 7 February that research “indirect cost” funding, which is key to the functioning of universities across the country, would be capped, effective immediately. Courts have put on hold many of these measures.
Bhattacharya gained public prominence after co-authoring an open letter called the Great Barrington Declaration. Published in October of 2020, it argued against COVID-19 lockdowns and in favour of normalcy to allow ‘herd immunity’ to take hold ― a proposal that was knocked down by numerous scientists and NIH officials. Francis Collins, head of the NIH at the time, told Fox News that “hundreds of thousands of people would have died if we had followed that strategy”.
Fresh priorities
At his confirmation hearing, Bhattacharya laid out his five priorities for the NIH: chronic disease research, reproducibility, encouraging a culture of “scientific dissent”, funding cutting-edge research and regulating “risky research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic”.
Bhattacharya repeatedly said that he “commits to making sure that all the scientists at the NIH and all those supported by the NIH have the resources they need to do their work.” Asked whether he would immediately restart grant review meetings, he responded, “Absolutely. My job would be to ensure that those fundamental scientific meetings and other activities happen.” He also affirmed the need for NIH funding to address the health needs of “minority populations” and for long COVID research.
But he didn’t commit explicitly to allowing new grants to start flowing again, or to re-hiring NIH employees who have been fired. Both Democratic and Republican senators brought up the 15% indirect-cost cap that the NIH attempted to impose on universities. Bhattacharya agreed that these funds pay for important things. But he also said that “there’s a lot of distrust” about how that money is spent and endorsed audits of indirect-cost spending.
Vaccine messaging
Bhattacharya spoke carefully when discussing infectious disease: if he is confirmed, his future boss will be Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, who has a long history of anti-vaccine activism. When asked about RFK’s statement at an anti-vaccine conference in 2023 that the NIH should give infectious disease science “a break for about 8 years,” Bhattacharya responded that RFK is “fully committed” to addressing the nation’s health needs, “including infectious disease.”
He also said that although he thinks that there’s no link between autism and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, he supports more research on the vaccine to help to convince people that there is no link between it and autism. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator from Louisiana and a physician, pressed him on the issue, reiterating that research has settled the matter. Bhattacharya responded, “I’m convinced” that there is no link, but “there are people who might disagree with me.” “That’s life,” Cassidy replied. “People still think Elvis is alive.”
Bhattacharya alleged that the administration of former US president Joe Biden, a Democrat, had subjected him to “censorship” during the COVID-19 pandemic and said repeatedly that he would give free voice to scientific dissent at the NIH. He also said he would rein in experiments that “might cause harm.” There has long been controversy about how to regulate research on pathogens that could spark a pandemic, and some lawmakers have proposed reinstating a moratorium on some types of that work.
An economist’s viewpoint
LaBonne notes that most NIH directors come from a scientific research background, and Bhattacharya’s economics background might leave him underinformed about the importance of basic science and of research on model organisms such as yeast, fruit flies, fish and frogs. “He’s an economist,” said LaBonne, “I’m concerned that he may not understand that most medical breakthroughs don’t come from research on human health, but from curiosity-driven research.”
Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, asked whether Bhattacharya would break the law if directed to do so by Trump. "I don't believe the president will ever ask me to break the law,” Bhattacharya said. ”That strains credulity,” Hassan replied.
The next step in the approval process is a vote by a Senate committee. That vote has not yet been scheduled.
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