Contact: Dorrit Walsh, dorrit.walsh@treatmentactiongroup.org
New York City, March 7, 2025 – The nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for Director of the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) continues the pattern of un- and under-qualified nominees put forward by the current administration. In TAG’s view, Bhattacharya has not been picked because of his experience with research, but rather because of his contrarian positions on COVID-19 and extensive history of opinion pieces in right wing media (listed in his CV[1]). He is a political nominee in the strict sense, for a non-political position administering the most important catalyst of scientific discovery in the world.
For the Congressional hearing on his nomination, Bhattacharya had the chutzpah to submit remarks accusing prior NIH officials of “a lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs,”[2] and stated “I don’t think ideology should determine what research gets funded.” Meanwhile, the administration that nominated him is undertaking unprecedented censorship of their verboten words from government websites (including NIH), cancelling NIH grants supporting research into topics they object to because of its bigoted, anti-science political ideology, firing NIH employees without reason, halting critical research by blocking payment for needed resources, and illegally trying to cut the indirect grant expenses vital to maintaining the infrastructure where research is conducted (Bhattacharya, who has received little NIH funding, stated he considered indirect costs to be a “tip”).[3]
Confronted with questions about these disastrous current events, Bhattacharya hedged and stated “I was not involved in those decisions,” but didn’t offer any criticism of this ongoing decimation of U.S. scientific leadership and integrity.
In response to a question about studies involving transgender people, Bhattacharya opined that NIH should be focused on conditions like obesity which, in his words, are “really hurting Americans.” Bhattacharya appeared unaware that transgender people are uniquely positioned to contribute to scientific understanding of the hormonal and chromosomal influences on well-known sex-based differences in the incidence of autoimmune disease and responses to infectious diseases[4],[5],[6],[7] (including HIV[8] and COVID-19[9]). This research benefits everyone, but cannot happen in the context of vicious, censorious attacks on the humanity, dignity, and right to exist of transgender people. Of note, Bhattacharya was a co-host of the “Illusion of Consensus” podcast: “An independent, podcast-fuelled newsletter devoted to dismantling weaponized ‘consensus’ in science: COVID-19, transgender care, nutrition, and mental health.”[10]
Bhattacharya has offered a grim insight into his moral malleability with a recent opinion piece citing the AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg. While Bhattacharya concedes that what he calls Duesberg’s “hypothesis” that HIV does not cause AIDS was false, he nonetheless characterizes Duesberg not as the alarming crank that he is, but as a legitimate “scientific critic” who was unfairly made “a pariah” by the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Anthony Fauci.[11]
Duesberg spent decades engaging in intellectual dishonesty to misrepresent the scientific literature on HIV, including such sleazy tactics as altering punctuation in quotes from scientific papers to completely alter the original meaning and make it appear they supported his erroneous argument that HIV is harmless. This reality is why he became a pariah to many, but — contrary to Bhattacharya’s assertion — he still has tenure at the University of California, Berkeley and remains a member in good standing of the National Academy of Sciences.[12]
Bhattacharya’s linked source for the false claim that Fauci made Duesberg a pariah is — horrifically — the AIDS denialist writer Celia Farber, who once sued a TAG staff member for libel for calling her and Duesberg liars and frauds. Thanks to kind pro bono legal representation by Joseph Evall, examples of their dishonest manipulations of the scientific literature were submitted to the courts and the case was dismissed on summary judgment, with two appeals also denied. These manipulations included a misquote of a New England Journal of Medicine paper in Mothering Magazine, which Farber used to pretend to readers that a highly efficacious intervention that reduced mother-to-child HIV transmission hadn’t worked.[13]
To our knowledge, Bhattacharya hasn’t attempted to defend Duesberg before, suggesting this piece written for the Brownstone Institute was kowtowing to his potential new boss Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who lauds Duesberg in his 2021 book and refers to him as a “heroic healer.” The embrace of Duesberg’s false claims about HIV in South Africa in the early 2000s is estimated to have caused >330,000 avoidable deaths and >35,000 cases of avertable infant HIV acquisition.[14] Bhattacharya has his own history of involvement with an organization that promoted denial of the seriousness of COVID-19 in South Africa.[15]
If Bhattacharya is appointed it will mean that the two most important positions overseeing scientific research in the U.S. will be occupied by people with a demonstrated inability to distinguish scientific dissent from science denialism. Yet worse, both appear willing to champion science denialism if it accords with their political views and those of the current administration.
TAG calls on all rational people to fight this attempt to corrupt U.S. science every step of the way, and reject the dystopian future that acceptance would portend.
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About TAG: Treatment Action Group (TAG) is an independent, activist and community-based research and policy think tank fighting for better treatment, prevention, a vaccine, and a cure for HIV, tuberculosis, and hepatitis C virus. TAG works to ensure that all people with HIV, TB, and HCV receive lifesaving treatment, care, and information. We are science-based treatment activists working to expand and accelerate vital research and effective community engagement with research and policy institutions.
[1] Bhattacharya J. Curriculum Vitae. 2025 January.
[2] Muller M. Trump’s NIH Pick Bhattacha Urges ‘Scientific Dissent’ in Senate Hearing Remarks. Bloomberg News, 2025 March 3.
[3] Palmer K. NIH Nominee Skirts Questions on Plan to Cut Indirect Cost Rates. Inside Higher Ed, 2025 Mar 6.
[4] White AA, Lin A, Bickendorf X, et al. Potential immunological effects of gender-affirming hormone therapy in transgender people – an unexplored area of research. Ther Adv Endocrinol Metab. 2022 Dec 10;13:20420188221139612.
[5] Wiepjes C, Den Heijer M. SAT416 The Incidence Of Autoimmune Disease In Transgender People After Initiation Of Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy. Journal of the Endocrine Society, Volume 7, Issue Supplement_1, October-November 2023, bvad114.2087.
[6] Yalcinkaya A, Yalcinkaya R, Sardh F, Landegren N. Immune dynamics throughout life in relation to sex hormones and perspectives gained from gender-affirming hormone therapy. Front Immunol. 2025 Jan 16;15:1501364.
[7] Lakshmikanth T, Consiglio C, Sardh F, et al. Immune system adaptation during gender-affirming testosterone treatment.Nature. 2024 Sep;633(8028):155-164.
[8] Mihealsick E, Word A, Scully EP. The impact of sex on HIV immunopathogenesis and therapeutic interventions. J Clin Invest. 2024 Sep 17;134(18):e180075.
[9] Takahashi T, Ellingson MK, Wong P, et al. Sex differences in immune responses that underlie COVID-19 disease outcomes. Nature. 2020 Dec;588(7837):315-320.
[10] https://www.illusionconsensus.com/podcast, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-illusion-of-consensus/id1685718305
[11] Bhattacharya J. Anthony Fauci: The Man Who Thought He Was Science. Brownstone Institute. 2024 October 15.
[12] https://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/duesberg/pages/index.html, https://www.nasonline.org/directory-entry/peter-h-duesberg-u8t9xk/
[13] Quackdown. How Celia Farber tried to sue an AIDS activist – and lost. 2012 January 31.
[14] Chigwedere P, Seage GR 3rd, Gruskin S, Lee TH, Essex M. Estimating the lost benefits of antiretroviral drug use in South Africa. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2008 Dec 1;49(4):410-5.
[15] Corn D. Trump’s NIH Pick Advised South African Group That Claimed There Was No Covid Pandemic. Mother Jones. 2025 March 6.