WASHINGTON – Jay Bhattacharya, currently serving as director of the National Institutes of Health, has been tapped to simultaneously lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on an interim basis, according to an administration source who spoke Wednesday.
The appointment was initially disclosed by The New York Times and later verified by the official, who requested anonymity since the decision had not yet been publicly announced.
This appointment makes Bhattacharya the third person to helm the troubled CDC, America’s premier public health organization, since President Donald Trump began his second presidency. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suddenly dismissed former CDC Director Susan Monarez during the summer, barely four weeks after senators had approved her nomination.
Monarez, who had spent years working as a government researcher, subsequently appeared before a Senate panel where she revealed that Kennedy terminated her employment after she declined to approve his proposed modifications to children’s immunization schedules without supporting scientific evidence.
Jim O’Neill, the Deputy Health Secretary and former investment professional, had been filling the acting CDC director position and supervising the vaccine policy revisions until his reported exit the previous week.
As a health economics expert and former Stanford University faculty member, Bhattacharya gained attention for his vocal opposition to the federal government’s coronavirus lockdown measures and vaccination mandates. In his NIH role, he manages the country’s most significant source of biomedical research funding.
During a recent congressional hearing, Bhattacharya stated that childhood measles vaccination represented “the best way to address the measles epidemic in this country,” and confirmed he had found no proof connecting individual vaccines to autism.
Trump administration representatives have indicated their intention to identify a long-term CDC director, a position that must receive Senate approval.
