Trump’s NIH Pick Recounts Censorship by Biden for Views On COVID: ‘Science … needs free speech’; NIH Director Nominee Outlines His Goals to Improve Public Health, and other C-Virus related stories

By admin On Mar 10, 2025

Trump’s NIH pick recounts censorship by Biden for views on COVID: ‘Science … needs free speech’:

President Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health delighted Republican lawmakers Wednesday by vowing to defend freedom of speech in scientific research while fending off an onslaught of questions about Elon Musk and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, who came to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic for his opposition to widespread lockdowns and mask mandates, recounted his own experience with having his dissent throttled by the Biden administration.

“The root problem was that people who had alternative ideas were suppressed,” Bhattacharya reflected during an exchange with Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) “I personally was subject to censorship by the actions of the Biden administration during the pandemic.”

“Science, to succeed, needs free speech,” he added. “It needs an environment where there’s tolerance for dissent.”

During the thick of the pandemic, the Biden administration exerted pressure on social media companies to target certain posts and users that it claimed were spreading information detrimental to public health.

The so-called “Twitter Files,” which Musk pushed the company to release after taking over the platform in late 2022, revealed that Bhattacharya’s account was one of those marked on the “trends blacklist.”

Bhattacharya, an epidemiologist at Stanford University, later joined a lawsuit against the Biden administration alleging that it trampled on free speech by colluding with Big Tech companies and pressing them to censor content. The US Supreme Court has since rejected the lawsuit on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing.

The NIH nominee also stressed the importance of scientists showing humility and deferring to policymakers when it comes to key issues. —>READ MORE HERE

NIH director nominee outlines his goals to improve public health

A relatively sedate Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee confirmation hearing for National Institutes of Health Director-nominee Dr. Jay Bhattacharya revealed his five goals to improve people’s health.

Bhattacharya is a Stanford University professor and health researcher, and he has engaged in NIH-funded research for several decades, committee chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said about Bhattacharya while opening the confirmation hearing Wednesday morning at the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Committee ranking member Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said the “health care system in our country is broken and is failing” despite spending almost twice as much per capita as any other industrialized nation and as more than 85 million Americans do not have health insurance.

Sanders said that, no matter who President Donald Trump nominates as a secretary of any federal agency, Department of Government Efficiency Director Elon Musk is in charge and already has assisted in terminating 1,200 workers at the NIH, and he froze grant funding.

He called Musk the “real leader” of the NIH and all other federal agencies and urged the committee invite Musk to explain such actions.

Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., introduced Bhattacharya and said he contacted him and others during the COVID-19 pandemic while he was governor of Nebraska.

Ricketts said Bhattacharya “showed great intellectual honesty and courage” by providing alternative recommendations for handling the pandemic that differed from those recommended by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and others.

He said Bhattacharya cautioned against lockdowns and their potential effect on people’s health, which led to Nebraska opening schools sooner than most other states.