President Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH) faced questions from senators Wednesday on his plans for vaccine research, ideas for pushing down drug prices, and response to recent firings and funding cuts at the agency.
Jay Bhattacharya appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for his confirmation hearing, with Trump’s pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary, set to be grilled on Thursday.
Bhattacharya is a Stanford University health researcher and economist who made headlines as a leading critic of U.S. health agencies early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, criticizing lockdown orders and other measures meant to mitigate the spread of the virus.
He also spoke out in support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after his nomination to be President Trump’s health secretary in November. “Kennedy is not a scientist, but his good faith calls for better research and more debate are echoed by many Americans,” Bhattacharya wrote.
If confirmed, Bhattacharya will be in charge of the country’s top health research agency, which is also the biggest funder of biomedical research on the planet. The agency funds almost $48 billion in scientific research through roughly 50,000 grants to more than 300,000 researchers across 2,500 universities, hospitals and other institutions.
However, among the first moves in Trump’s cost-cutting efforts was to slash the funding to help research centers cover overhead costs, a move that spurred bipartisan pushback.
Here are five big takeaways from the hearing:
Backs research into debunked links between vaccines, autism
Bhattacharya said that he fully supports children being vaccinated against diseases like measles and is “convinced” that the NIH has “good data” supporting that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism.
But he still backed research into debunked theories that vaccines contribute to autism among children, drawing concern from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician himself. Both Kennedy and Trump have said more research is needed into the cause of childhood autism.
Cassidy asked Bhattacharya to comment on rumors he had heard that the NIH plans to invest resources to investigate a possible link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism spectrum disorder.
Bhattacharya said he supports financing further studies investigating a possible link, to address concerns among vaccine skeptics. Cassidy questioned if that was a good use of federal funds, suggesting money was better spent researching chronic diseases.
“The more that we pretend this is an issue the more children we will have dying from vaccine-preventable diseases,” Cassidy said.
Wants to create a culture of ‘scientific dissent’ at NIH
In his opening remarks, Bhattacharya expressed his disproval of what he said was an unwillingness by previous NIH leaders to listen to competing ideas. He pledged, if confirmed, to establish a culture of “respect for free speech in science” and “scientific dissent” at the agency.
“Over the last few years, top NIH officials oversaw a culture of cover-up, obfuscation and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differ from theirs,” he told senators. “Dissent is the very essence of science.”
Bhattacharya claimed he was censored for his opinions by the Biden administration during the COVID-19 pandemic after he challenged the efficacy of shelter-in-place orders.
“I will foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists, including early career scientists and scientists that disagree with me can express disagreement respectfully,” he said.
Shied away from speaking on NIH firings and funding cuts
Senators across the aisle pressed Bhattacharya on the Trump administration’s recent mass firing of NIH staff and grant freezes.
“I was not involved in those decisions and if I get confirmed as NIH director I fully commit to making sure that all the scientists at the NIH and the scientists the NIH supports have all the resources they need to meet the mission of the NIH,” he said.
Senators also asked if he supported recent efforts to scale back overhead funding associated with NIH grants, which he also did not directly answer. Last month, the Trump administration said it would reduce NIH funding to universities, hospitals, and other research institutions to help cover facility and administrative costs.
That indirect cost rate now applies to all new and current NIH grants and is capped at 15 percent of the total cost of the grant, down from a previous average of nearly 30 percent, and as high as 60 percent at some universities.
Senators stressed that the cap would have a devastating impact on life-saving research on cancer and Alzheimer’s disease and was in direct violation of congressional appropriations.
Suggested lower drug prices by researching off-label uses
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pressed Bhattacharya on what he would do to lower the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. if confirmed as head of NIH. Sanders cited data showing that one in four U.S. adults struggle to pay for their prescriptions.
Bhattacharya suggested NIH fund research on the off-label use of off-patent drugs to knock down prescription prices. Sanders pressed Bhattacharya again by asking if he believed that drug manufacturers that benefit from taxpayer-funded research through the NIH should be able to charge any price they want for a drug, and whether he supported attaching a clause to contracts that would force NIH-funded drugmakers to charge reasonable prices for resulting drugs.
Bhattacharya did not say either way if he would support such a clause.
Supports reinstating ban on aborted fetal tissue use in NIH research
Sen. Josh Hawley (R- Mo) asked Bhattacharya if he would support the reinstatement of a policy enacted during Trump’s first term, then reversed under Biden, that barred NIH funds from being used to purchase abortive fetal tissue for research.
Bhattacharya said he would support the return of the Trump-era policy and follow the president and HHS secretary’s lead on when and how to reinstate it.
“We have alternatives,” he said. “I would often be on a Catholic radio and people would ask me whether the mRNA vaccines were made or developed with aborted fetal stem cells. I had to say yes.”
“We need to make sure that products of science are ethically acceptable to everybody and so having alternatives… is not just an ethical issue, it’s a public health issue.”
Many in the scientific community consider research using fetal tissue or cells derived from fetal tissue critical for biomedical research, including on vaccines. In the 1950s, Swedish researchers developed a polio vaccine with the help of fetal cells. Pfizer and Moderna both used fetal cell lines in the early process of developing their COVID-19 vaccines to test their efficacy, like other vaccine developers have in the past.
The fetal tissue used in the process came from abortions performed decades ago and had replicated so many times that none of the original tissue was used.
