“WHO manipulated science to promote its propaganda during the pandemic”

For the first time, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a central figure in the scientific resistance to the Covid health abuses and now Director of the prestigious NIH, grants an exclusive interview to a French-speaking media. For L'Impertinent, he looks back on his meteoric rise from ostracized scientist to leading voice in public health, and discusses his ambitious mission: to restore confidence, correct past mistakes and refocus biomedical research on the essentials. Vaccines, the misuse of science for political gain, the WHO's responsibility, censorship... we've covered it all.

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Amèle Debey for L’Impertinent: Last time we spoke, you were going to the Supreme Court to defend your freedom of speech. What a turn of events! You came from scientific pariah to director of the NIH. So my first question would be: how do you feel?

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: It's an amazing turn of events that led to me being the director. I think in many ways it's appropriate because the scientific establishment failed so badly during the pandemic. I think that the NIH is the most important institution for supporting biomechanical, scientific research in the world. But yet, the public at large has lost trust and faith and confidence in the scientific establishment, largely because of the way that the scientific establishment behaved during the pandemic. You mentioned the suppression of free speech.

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Large chunks of the scientific establishment embraced the suppression of speech during the pandemic. Certainly, the political establishment did, to some extent, goaded by the scientific establishment. So I think it's going to take just a lot of introspection by institutions like the NIH and reforms in order to regain that trust. And so I guess I'm supposed to do this. I'm supposed to help bridge this divide. I think that the NIH is such an important institution for advancing research on health, and it's too important to fail. I'm doing my very best to try to reestablish the trust that the American public should have in the NIH.

But that's going to take some work.

For our European readers, can you explain what the NIH is exactly, and what's NIH influence is on the world's health?

Sure. So the NIH, National Institute of Health, is a part of the American government. It's an institute with the mission of supporting scientific research that advances the health and longevity of the American people. But the fact is that the research that we do benefits the entire world. The research we do is fundamental biological research, advances in fundamental biology that translate over to better treatments for severe diseases, better ways of preventing chronic diseases. It's a whole host of research aimed at improving health for everybody, really. And at least that's the mission of it.

During the pandemic, I think there were many problems. But the fundamental thing, which is advancing our fundamental biological knowledge to improve health, that's a mission I think everybody can get behind. And one of my main aims is to make sure that the NIH achieves that mission, focuses on things that actually advance health rather than some of the politicized agendas that have embroiled the NIH during the pandemic.

And how are you going to make drugs cheaper for Americans? Because that's something we would love to do in Switzerland!

Well, so Switzerland does better than the United States, actually. A lot better. Branded prescription drugs are incredibly expensive in the United States. Sometimes two, three, four, up to 10 times pricier for the same product in the United States than it is in Europe.

The President signed an executive order a week ago – I think it's a week ago. Time moves at a different pace now. It feels like years ago – where he directed the United States government to address the price difference between the United States and the rest of the world in branded prescription drugs. He established something called Most Favored Nation Status, where the price for drugs in the United States should match the lowest prices in the developed world. There's a long history of this before the President's order, of course. And the difference in price between the United States and the rest of the world in branded prescription drugs, it's been going on for decades. Previously, presidents and congresses that have tried to address this have failed, in part because the drug companies will say: "Well, look, we need to have high prices in the United States in order to fund research and development".

Why should the United States consumers alone pay for this research and development? Shouldn't the entire developed world share this burden?

“It is possible that drug prices will rise in developed countries”

And of course, the NIH invests 50 billion dollars of investment in basic scientific research that's supposed to result in better treatments and cures. So the goal of it is to equalize the prices between the United States and the rest of the world so that the whole world together, especially the developed world, shares in the burden of advancing research on the prescription, on drugs that will address the diseases that people have rather than just the United States alone.

Will that increase the cost of medicine in other countries?

It might, but I think the key thing is that if this argument is correct, that the research that pharmaceutical companies do advances health, why should one country bear all the burden of that and all the rest of the world not share in that burden? I call it a burden, but in fact, if it pays off in better drugs that cure Alzheimer's disease, that better manage type 2 diabetes or prevent it or cure it altogether or address the chronic health needs of the world, especially the developed world, that's a big plus. It's worth investing in. And in a sense, there's underinvestment across the world when you just have one country alone making those kinds of investments, rather than the world as a whole.

I've seen that your main goal is also to get to the root of the sickness, rather than simply curing it. But that means taking on a multibillion-dollar industry. Medicine has become a business that runs because people are sick. So, do you think it's possible to reverse this trend?

I do. I mean, that's the whole goal of the Make America Healthy Again movement. Rather than having a health care system devoted primarily to managing the sick after they've already become chronically ill – which, of course, we still need to do – instead, have society focused on preventing those kinds of chronic diseases in the first place? I think people say that it's bad for business to do that. I've heard people say that. But what if business was focused on keeping people healthy rather than managing people's illnesses after they've gotten very, very sick, chronically ill. That's not necessarily bad for business. I think the key thing is we have to change the incentives of the health care system as well as our food systems and a whole host of other policies, which are likely at the root of why there's so many chronically ill people.

“Life expectancy has risen steadily in Europe since 2012”

Europe actually has it better than the US. Since 2012, the United States saw no increase in its life expectancy. Of course, there was a collapse during the pandemic in life expectancy. And only last year, I think, is the first year we've gotten back up to 2019 levels. Europe has had life expectancy increases steadily since 2012. The US is in a crisis, a chronic disease crisis. And so I understand why there's a political movement that wants to change that. We have to address the health problems that the American people have. And as I said, I think if we address it with excellent science, it will benefit the whole world.

Since you've become director, is there anything you see differently regarding the implication of NIH in gain of function research and the laboratory leak? What mistakes have been made?

Two weeks ago – again, feels like two years ago – the President of the United States signed an executive order banning dangerous gain of function research. Now, just to be clear about what that means: the vast majority of biomedical research is not dangerous to the public at large. It's aimed at scientific experimentation to advance human knowledge and poses no danger to the public. That's 99.99% of research. A small fraction of the research that scientists, biologists do, do pose risks to the public.

“The public will be able to decide whether dangerous research can take place”

So, for instance, bringing pathogens that infect bats, but do not infect humans, into city centers and laboratories that are not particularly secure, doing research on them to make them more transmissible among humans. That's actually a really dangerous research agenda. And I say this not as a theoretical matter, but I think it's very likely that it was the cause of the pandemic. The scientists should not be doing that work. At the very least, they shouldn't be deciding by themselves that they should do that work. The public should have a say. And that's dangerous gain of function research. That's what the President's order banned.

“Dangerous NIH-approved research will never be conducted again”

In the next four months, we're going to develop a regulatory system where the research that scientists do will be that 0,01%, that small fraction of research that poses a potential existential risk to humanity will not be done without the public having a say in whether it should be done, and most likely, it should not be done at all.

The regulatory system that existed before on this research was very, very leaky. In fact, the regulatory system that existed before and during the pandemic essentially permitted for scientists to decide if such research should be done at all without the public having any say so. This new gain of function ban is tremendously important for the world because what it says is we shouldn't be doing this research unless the public has some visibility into it and has a say so. So it can say no. And the regulatory framework that will be developed in this process will make sure that the dangerous research that scientists signed off on, including, I'm sorry to say, including at the NIH, will never be done again.

But this executive order concerns only the funding abroad, right? What about inland? Because For instance, Jeffrey Sachs, among others, has been talking about the hypothesis of a leak from an American lab. Have you been able to look into that?

I think it's very likely a leak from the Wuhan laboratory in China as the most likely cause of the pandemic. I think the United States funded some of the research that went on in that lab. But I think the most likely cause of the pandemic was a leak from that Chinese lab, which was conducted at a very low biosecurity level. The key thing about the gain of function ban is it applies to all research that we do across the federal government in the United States. So it will greatly reduce the likelihood, hopefully to zero, of anyone in the United States working on projects such as the projects that likely led to the pandemic. I would hope that the entire world would adopt this.

It's actually very similar now to what happened in the mid-1990s with the nuclear test ban treaty. The world as a whole decided that testing nuclear weapons was too dangerous for us to allow. And the whole world decided together that we weren't going to do this anymore. Or the Bio-We weapons Convention of 1973. I think we are at a stage where it would be a good idea for the entire world to come together and say, let's not do this work because it benefits nobody.

“Scientists were much more dogmatic during the pandemic”

You can't use it as a way gain geopolitical advantage. It's just dangerous for the populations of any country that engages in it, this dangerous work. And as I said, it's a small fraction of the portfolio of biomedical sciences. Most of biomedical sciences are aimed at improving the health of people with no existential risk to the population. This executive order establishes the United States as a leader in regulating this work. And I hope that other countries around the world follows us.

Talking a little bit about your new colleagues: some say that the Trump administration is the "you're either with me or against me" kind of spirit. Will you be able to follow your path and take a stand should you disagree with Kennedy or Trump on science and health topics?

Well, I mean, I've had a lot of interactions with Secretary Kennedy and a few interactions with President Trump since I've become NIH director. And my sense is that they are very open. So I have had lots of conversations with Secretary Kennedy where we can discuss scientific ideas, and I found him incredibly open to scientific evidence. I think the press accounts of Secretary Kennedy being dogmatic or President Trump being dogmatic on scientific matters is just not true in my own experience.

When you're in a position like this, Most of those disagreements will happen behind closed doors. But what I've seen is that when I present scientific evidence, they change their mind. I think it's a testament to the power of good honest science that it can persuade people who disagree. I think the press accounts of them being dogmatic are just false.

In fact, I found that scientists were much more dogmatic during the pandemic and not amenable to scientific evidence presented than Secretary Kennedy or President Trump have been, in my experience.

Is there stuff you disagree about?

I mean, it's just normal. It's not possible otherwise. I don't know anybody who agrees with me about everything. That would be very boring.

Do you share Secretary Kennedy's skepticism about vaccine?

If you think about what his position is, he's trying to hold vaccines to a higher standard than the scientific community holds them to. He's saying, well, we need good evidence on side effects. I'll just give you an example of how this was suppressed during the pandemic:

“I've never seen Secretary Kennedy want to order anyone to be censored for anything”

During the pandemic, the Biden administration ordered social media companies to censor true stories of Covid vaccine injuries by patients who had suffered them, to censor the people that said that, because the idea was that we should manipulate how people think about the Covid vaccine rather than allowing patients to honestly say what their experience was with the Covid vaccine.

I've never seen Secretary Kennedy want to order anyone to be censored for anything.

I believe very strongly that on the MMR vaccine, for instance, there's excellent evidence for its necessity, efficacy, and, in large degree, it's safety. I mean, there are obviously no vaccine, no medical product that is 100% safe. There's going to be some side effects for some people. At the same time, other vaccines, like the Covid vaccines, probably shouldn't be given to children. The United States is an international outlier in this. In Switzerland, the Covid vaccine is not recommended in children. In the United States, it's recommended for six month olds.

What will happen with the Covid vaccines? Some are advocating for its withdrawal. So, from what you're saying, it's far from happening.

There's still a policy process that is complicated, and it goes on inside the administration about decisions like that. But from a scientific point of view, I think the European nations are correct in saying that children as young as six months should not be taking the Covid vaccine.

For vaccines, generally, you have to look vaccine by vaccine carefully at the benefits and the potential harms. And make decisions. So for instance, I believe the measles vaccine, it is warranted to recommend it for children, very young children. Whereas the Covid vaccine, I personally, from a scientific point of view, don't believe that's true. The policy making is a more complicated thing that involves lots of people and lots of players. So I shouldn't get ahead of that policy making process. But I do want to point out the difference between Europe and the United States in the recommendation for the Covid vaccine for children. Europe, I think, has a much more rational policy in line with the scientific evidence than the United States does on Covid vaccines for babies.

But this vaccine has been authorized with the Emergency use authorization. So who can decide to withdraw this authorization? Is it the FDA only?

I think Secretary Kennedy has the authority, but again, he has to get advice from lots and lots of parts of the government to make that decision. The CDC has a role, the FDA has a role.

That's not in the books for now?

Well, I shouldn't say. There's lots of discussions going on. Who knows where they're going.

What about MRNA technologies and gene therapy?

Let me distinguish the use of MRNA technology for the vaccines versus the technology as a whole. I think gene therapies are potentially a tremendously useful technique for addressing some previously unaddressable problems. I'll just give you an example: there's been a big advance in the treatment of sickle cell anemia, a disease that differentially affects African-American populations, especially kids, and can be absolutely deadly. It's a genetic mutation that leads to clotting disorders, severe pain in folks who have this genetic mutation. And there's been a new advance in using new gene editing methods to cure it altogether for kids. A huge advance.

“We have to be very careful about using technologies that have such deep distrust”

In that setting, this gene editing technology is really important for advancing human health. And there are other examples I can give. I hope that there will be future advances like this. The way that they were used during the pandemic has made large parts of the population in the United States distrust the technology for their use in vaccines. And I think we have to be very careful about using technologies that have such deep distrust behind them for vaccination programs. Especially when there are alternate technologies available.

In large part, I think the problem was caused by the vaccine mandates that were quite prevalent in the United States that the Biden administration imposed. Many, many people lost their jobs because they were essentially being coerced to take a vaccine that they didn't want, and in some cases didn't need because they had already had Covid and recovered. And so a lot of people lost trust in public health as a consequence of it. So in that context, we have to be very careful about their use in vaccines, especially when there are alternate technologies available that do not have the same stigma attached to them.

The link between this Covid vaccine and the cancer increase, for instance, is brought up by renowned scientist. Will the NIH fund research on the Covid vaccine side effects?

Well, so mostly it's the FDA in the United States that conducts research on the side effects of approved products like the Covid vaccine. The NIH does fund research on vaccines, and I think we probably do too little research on vaccine safety as a general matter. So this is something I think we should address. I think we do a great job on vaccine efficacy and the development of new vaccines for prevention of diseases. But we should do more on vaccine safety. But generally, the NIH would be doing research on vaccines that are not approved, that are still in a research stage rather than already approved for use.

What is going to be done to repair the Covid wrongdoings?

To me, the most important thing that I can do as director of the NIH is to make sure that the NIH is focused on problems that really are relevant for the American people. Going back and refighting, I do think that we need an honest assessment of what happened during the pandemic. If it has not happened in Europe, it hasn't really happened in the United States. But I think it will have to come in time.

In medicine, for instance, when a patient dies in a hospital, sometimes what will happen is something called a mortality and morbidity conference, where the doctors involved in the patient care will have an honest discussion about what went wrong, with the idea of correcting the mistakes so they never happen again. I think we're approaching the time when the world is ready for such a discussion. But I think the problem is we have to have this in a spirit where we're not pointing fingers, and we are ready to listen to each other with our ears open. And I hope that that will happen at some point.

“The lockdowns were a violation of the interests of all of those vulnerable people”

I do think that a discussion about our plans for the next pandemic needs to happen as soon as we can, because we don't want to repeat the mistakes we made on the last one. In particular, the interests of the world's poor, of children, of the working class need to be represented in the pandemic plans. The lockdowns were a violation of the interests of all of those vulnerable people, of children, of working-class people, of the world's poor.

And any pandemic plan that doesn't consider the plight of the living circumstances and the interest of the vulnerable is bound to fail, both from a policy point of view and also from an ethical point of view.

What about the Ivy League behavior during this crisis? I mean, will there be a change in institutions that teach science? I know you have experience bashing firsthand in this context.

I'll just speak for universities in the United States, but I think it's also true for most universities in Europe: the universities are supposed to be places that champion academic freedom, freedom to dissent, and also excellent research in scientific matters, which require free speech, academic freedom and scientific dissent to function well. Universities across the world, especially the top universities, failed at this during the pandemic pretty fundamentally. So many of the top universities did not allow there to be scientific conferences where people who were skeptical about lockdowns were represented. This failure means that the universities need to reform. And even before the pandemic, there were worries that the top universities in the United States had become monocultures, where dissenting ideas were not welcome.

“Universities have become inhospitable places for people who disagree with the reigning orthodoxy”

I think that it is appropriate that the Trump administration ask the universities to reform so that diversity of thought can prevail. Universities are ideally small "l" liberal. I don't mean liberal in the political sense. I mean the political philosophy sense. There's small "l" liberal institutions devoted to freedom of expression, freedom of thought, dissenting opinions, debate. That's when universities function best. And they have become inhospitable places for people who disagree with the reigning orthodoxy, big "L" liberal.

I think that it's appropriate for the United States to ask its universities, who receive vast amounts of support dollars from the American taxpayers, to reform. To become what they're supposed to be. We're not asking for the universities to do something that they shouldn't do. We're asking them to become what they always have aspired to be: places where free expression can happen, descent can happen, and excellent science can happen free of ideology.

Do you know if Martin Kulldorff is going back to Harvard, for instance?

I don't think they're inviting him back. It's really sad that he was a tenured professor, one of the world's best biostatisticians, and Harvard let him go over the Covid vaccine. I think it is a black mark on Harvard's history that they have done that, and I don't know of any plans to bring him back.

What do you think about President Trump's decision to leave WHO?

I think the WHO failed during the pandemic, and I believe that it needs to reform if it's going to regain the trust of the world. And I have not seen any indication that WHO acknowledges its pandemic mistakes. It recommended lockdown to the developing countries of the world. And now you have kids in the Philippines, in India, in Africa who missed school for years. If you're worried about global inequality, you should blame the WHO because what they've done is essentially advise to lockdown.

“We need a WHO that actually represents science rather than the interest of the laptop class”

I've seen attempts to evade the idea that they were in favor of lockdowns, but they were. They recommended them, including the school closures. They're to blame. And they have not made any effort as best I can tell, to do any introspection regarding their pandemic mistakes. It's not an institution at this point that's worth the trust of the world's public. I hope it reforms. In principle, the WHO is very important to world public health, but we need a WHO that actually represents science rather than the interest of the laptop class, which is what they did during the pandemic.

But cutting the fundings, will that just end up for them to do the same things, but worse? I mean, is that the good answer?

I mean, I think the United States is the primary funder of a large chunk of the WHO. It sends a very clear signal that the United States expects the WHO to do better. I hope that it's not permanent, but it would require the WHO to reform. I would hope that the rest of the world would also try to send a signal to the WHO that it had failed.

Its job is to protect the entire world population, not just a small class of very, very rich people in very, very rich countries. And it failed to follow science during the pandemic. After we wrote the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, the WHO changed its definition of herd immunity to exclude, in infection, acquired immunity. It manipulated science in order to promote propaganda during the pandemic and failed the world's population, especially the world's poor.

Until it reforms, and I think the US withdrawal sends a clear signal to the WHO that it ought to reform, there should be no mystery about why people don't trust it anymore.

Since the end of Roe v Wade, the diversity of abortion rights in the country may end up causing a health crisis. Is that something you worry about?

This is not something the NIH directly addresses. I think Roe v Wade essentially suppressed the political debate over abortion in the United States. And now what we're seeing is the normal political process that every controversial issue is addressed across the United States. And I think we're still in a transitional phase about where the policy will end up. But I think it's healthy for these kinds of political matters to be debated in political settings rather than having just a few judges decide.

I heard that no Democrats in the Senate have voted for you to be nominated. Is the US a country more fractured than ever?

I mean, that's true that I got zero Democratic votes, but actually, it was very interesting, Amèle, because I had many conversations with Democratic senators in their offices one on one. And what I found was that there was actually a pretty broad agreement about many, many items, and most of them wanted to work with me after I was confirmed.

“My job is partly to de-politicize the NIH”

Science, in particular, the NIH, inherently is not a political organization. It's become political, but inherently, it shouldn't be political. The mission is research that improves the health and longevity of the American people. That's a universal mission. It doesn't matter what your politics are. There's no such thing as Democratic children or Republican children. There's no such thing as health improvements only for Democrats or health improvements only for Republicans. In principle, this should be a bipartisan matter. I think the partisanship that we're seeing regarding the science institutions of the country is an aftermath of Covid, where public health and the scientific institutions actively embraced politicization. My job, I believe, is partly to de-politicize this agency and to make it a bipartisan... Make it something where there's bipartisan in support after the reforms are done.

But some scientists seem to be worried in the United States. The New York Times is talking about science censorship. What do you want to say to them?

I wish the New York Times had cared about censorship during the pandemic. They worked very hard to ignore the fact that the Biden administration censored scientists who disagreed. I personally was placed on a blacklist by Twitter, and I don't know that the New York Times ever covered that story fairly.

“It's difficult for me to take the New York Times seriously when they talk about censorship”

A lot of the efforts of the Biden administration were made to censor scientists who disagreed about lockdowns, disagreed about vaccine mandates, disagreed about masking toddlers. And the New York Times studiously ignored these facts. So it's difficult for me to take the New York Times seriously when they talk about censorship.

One of the first things I did as a NIH director is I instituted a policy that scientists at the NIH, if they have a scientific paper that they want to publish, they will not have to be reviewed by their supervisors for content. What I found out was that, during the pandemic, scientists at the NIH who had papers that they wanted to publish were often suppressed by their own supervisors because it didn't match the message that the NIH wanted to send regarding the pandemic.

I think that the NIH should lead by example. There should be academic freedom at the NIH. And that's one of the first policies I implemented. I think it's very important that people at the NIH feel free to publish papers that I disagree with as director. That's how science advances is by allowing that open disagreement. The policy of the Trump administration is academic freedom. The censorship regime that the Biden administration imposed has been lifted. It's gone. I wish the New York Times will report that.

I read that four chiefs of the 27 institutes and centers have been recently fired. Why?

So the personnel actions happened before I arrived, so I wasn't privy to the discussions regarding that. I do think that as a general matter, turnover in the scientific leadership of is a good thing. I think that part of the problem during the pandemic is that we had scientific leaders that have been in place for decades. I think that leads to scientific stagnation. I think just regular change in the leadership of scientific institutions is a healthy thing. I shouldn't speak specifically to the personnel matters because I wasn't privy to the decision making around them. And from what I can tell, there were excellent scientists that were let go. So I don't know what the process that led to that was. But I do think that it's not bad or wrong to have regular change in scientific leadership. I don't want to be in this position for decades, and I don't anticipate that I will be.

And what about revolving doors? Isn't it the time to make an executive order, for instance, to prevent people working for FDA or NIH, or CDC to working for Pfizer or whatever other pharma group after that? Because it's been happening.

I should say for me personally, I have never taken any pharmaceutical money funding from my own research, and I will never will. I've always viewed for me personally, my ability to stay unbiased is more important to me than to take pharmaceutical money funding. I know a lot of scientists who take pharmaceutical money funding and do excellent science. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad. The key thing to me is transparency.

We need to have a system where everybody can know where the funding is coming from and the funding history of scientists when they make their science available. Marty Makary at the FDA recently instituted a policy where pharmaceutical companies will not be able to sit directly on the boards that make recommendations about products that they themselves have created. I think that things like that essentially clear lines of where you can understand people's interests. Again, they can do excellent science even if they have those interests, but just to be transparent about them and then don't allow there to be mixing of the regulatory process with it.

It's hard to say... Because the funding of science includes both private and public interests, and it's appropriate that it includes both. They have different roles in science. You can't take private funding out of science. I think it's because private funding of scientific research is really an important part of drug development, for instance, right? And that's in large part good. But at the same time, you have to make clean lines, and that has often been blurred in the past. I think transparency is the way to address that problem.

Because we cannot regulate it further?

It's a complicated issue. I think what the public is owed is honest information about the financial interests of scientists, just as they're owed honest information about the financial interests of doctors that they see.

During my interview with Peter Gotzsche, we talked about the Make America Healthy Again slogan. But has America ever been healthy?

I think The United States for a long time, especially after World War II, was a world leader in health. It's only in recent decades where it's fallen behind Europe so badly in life expectancy, for instance. It was among the longest lived countries in the world in 1960, I think. Now, was America healthy in 1960? It had tremendous health problems. Like smoking was a severe health problem. Many of the diseases of poverty were a problem. It's not that America was healthy in 1960, but by the standards of the world, it was relatively healthy.

The United States has fallen behind the rest of the developed world in its health. We have chronic disease problems at scale. We have high levels of obesity, high levels of type 2 diabetes, heart disease. The problem of Alzheimer's disease is severe. Our life expectancy didn't increase from 2012 to 2019, and then fell more than the most of the developed world during the pandemic, and only recently has come back up to 2019 levels. That's not true for much of Europe. If you look at Scandinavian life expectancy or particularly Sweden, you see a continual increase in life expectancy since 2012 and before. A small dip in 2020, and then back up to the same trend into 2021.

I like the slogan because it promises that we can become something that we will always aspire to be: healthy as a nation, focused on policies that make everybody healthier. So I think it's a good slogan because it expresses an aspiration that it's worthwhile.