Unlike the other cabinet nominees that Donald Trump has selected who will battle with their organizations and take no prisoners, I suspect that Jay Bhattacharya will define his actions and responsibilities differently. He’s not afraid to argue and protest injustices when he’s trying to protect citizens from the deluded powers-that-be; but he will make changes with determination and clarity, and hopefully remove those people in power that have demanded unreasonable responses to the health needs of the public.

Bhattacharya has many reasons to take retribution, especially against Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins. When Bhattacharya produced the Great Barrington Declaration, he was lambasted by Collins, now retired from the NIH:

The declaration called for speeding herd immunity by allowing people at low risk to get infected while protecting those most vulnerable, like the elderly.

It was denounced by many public health experts as unscientific and irresponsible. ‘This is a fringe component of epidemiology,’ Collins told The Washington Post shortly after the document was released. ‘This is not mainstream science. It’s dangerous. It fits into the political views of certain parts of our confused political establishment.’

Not only was Collins lying, but he was also trying to damage Bhattacharya’s stellar reputation. But his reputation survived, given his background:

Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute. He holds courtesy appointments as Professor in Economics and in Health Research and Policy. He directs the Stanford Center on the Demography of Health and Aging. Dr. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the economics of health care around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. Dr. Bhattacharya’s peer-reviewed research has been published in economics, statistics, legal, medical, public health, and health policy journals. He holds an MD and PhD in economics from Stanford University.

As you can tell, the man is no lightweight in his field. And yet some people, after all that has been discovered about him, condemn his ideas:

‘I don’t think that Jay Bhattacharya belongs anywhere near the NIH, much less in the director’s office,’ says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. ‘That would be absolutely disastrous for the health and well-being of the American public and actually the world.’

Fortunately, Rasmussen is in Canada.

Unfortunately, there are still absurd medical studies going on. The National Library of Medicine funded this one, in the hope of improving the treatment of patients by their doctors:

The project will use ‘social signal processing,’ a computational approach that detects subtle forms of bias that are typically invisible. For example, talk time, interruptions and body movements from health-care providers might differ based on a patient’s race, gender or socioeconomic status.

‘These hidden biases can undermine many patient-doctor interactions and they make a difference in the care people receive and the trust they have in the entire health-care establishment,’ Pratt said.

By using technology to detect such biases, the researchers hope to provide feedback to clinicians and reduce the disparities as a result. They aim to lay the foundation for training resources that will ultimately improve the quality of care by improving communication between patients and doctors.

Seriously? How about training doctors how to act like decent human beings. All the studies in the world aren’t going to change how they treat patients.

A big part of the problem in the research world, which depends a great deal on the funds of the NIH, is the reluctance to break out of the pre-Covid mold:

In a February 2020 paper, Dr. Bhattacharya analyzed why pharmaceutical advances are slowing. The phenomenon has been called Eroom’s law, a reverse spelling of Moore’s law, which observes an acceleration in computer-chip advancements over time.

Dr. Bhattacharya concluded that career incentives encouraged ‘me-too research.’ Citations by other scientists ‘have become the dominant way to evaluate scientific contributions and scientists.’ That in turn has shifted research ‘toward incremental science and away from exploratory projects that are more likely to fail, but which are the fuel for future breakthroughs.’

Even worse than the obvious reticence for break-out research is the lack of science-based research, where the priority has been to satisfy those in charge:

[Anthony] Fauci became a hero to many scientists, public health experts and members of the public. But he also became a lightning rod for Republican criticism because of changing advice about masks, support for the vaccines, and, most heatedly, about the origins of the virus.

‘In the United States we abandoned evidence-based medicine during the pandemic. Therefore, there's now enormous distrust, I think, both in medicine and in public health. NIH has an important role to restore the integrity in medical research and public health research,’ Kulldorff says.

(Martin Kulldorff was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration.)

So, what can we hope for from Dr. Bhattacharya if he is appointed Director of NIH? Based on his stated priorities during Covid-19, let’s hope he initiates the following:

1. State-of-the-art research (edge science) in the field of medicine and public health.
2. Science-based approaches identified for future pandemics.
3. Ongoing studies to measure the effects and effectiveness of vaccines in the long-term.
4. A commitment to flexibility in treatment in the face of unforeseen or unfamiliar illnesses.
5. Grants given to scientists who are willing to push the envelope of medical science.
6. An atmosphere that supports the exchange of many kinds of ideas for developing treatments and cures.
7. Steps taken that will rebuild the trust of the public for the public health system.
8. Continued independence from the World Health Organization, which promoted the lies of China to disguise their mismanagement of the Covid-19 virus.
9. A re-establishment of prohibiting “gain of function” research, which investigates ways to intensify the virulence and danger of viruses.

I’ll close with this praise for Dr. Bhattacharya:

Dr. Bhattacharya’s top charge at the NIH will be returning the agency to its original mission of funding innovation rather than political science masquerading as real science.

Let’s hope he’s ready to face another war.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.