Jay Bhattacharya, nominee as NIH director, toes the party line in the Senate

Essentially the most telling sign from Jay Bhattacharya’s affirmation listening to as nominee to direct the Nationwide Institutes of Well being on Wednesday lay in what he wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t say he’d restore funding to grants on LGBTQ points canceled by the Trump administration — at the same time as he stated he didn’t assume ideology ought to decide the course of science. He wouldn’t say that there’s been sufficient analysis in regards to the long-debunked hyperlink between vaccines and autism, at the same time as a Republican senator declared it will be “pissing away cash” on a query that has been extensively studied already. He wouldn’t say that he would object if President Trump gave him unlawful directives, at the same time as he vowed to observe the regulation.

The evasiveness shouldn’t be anticipated to matter a lot in relation to whether or not he’ll be confirmed. He’s thought-about a shoo-in. Bhattacharya is a wonky-economist-turned-Covid-firebrand, sufficient of the previous to attraction to some lecturers, sufficient of the latter to attraction to Trump loyalists suspicious of scientific experience. He spent his listening to earlier than the Senate well being committee tiptoeing throughout that very same tightrope, committing to supporting NIH science whereas refusing to acknowledge hurt that liberals — and even some conservatives — say his future bosses have already accomplished to it.

Numerous occasions, he invoked public mistrust in science to keep away from instantly answering questions which may put him at odds with Trump or well being secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. That was why he wouldn’t rule out spending further cash on doubtlessly redundant analysis on vaccines and autism. It was additionally why he needed to audit universities on how they spend “oblique prices” — an institutional tip, of kinds, on prime of the quantity NIH grants on to researchers, to assist with overhead bills like retaining lab buildings lit.