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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hi everybody, it's Cheryl Achison. Welcome to the latest edition of Full Measure. After hours today, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, head of NIH and acting CDC director, tells about his reforms of a broken system and how he's launching a vaccine injury effort. If you're a longtime viewer of Full Measure, you probably saw me interview Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. The first time was when he was just emerging from relative inconspicuousness at Stanford University. He was a medical school professor and an esteemed public researcher, but he went to the forefront of global controversies caused by Covid. He helped get thousands of signatures on something that he helped create called the Great Barrington Declaration, which rightly took on bad policies and misinformation pushed out by the government at the time, including the lockdowns for the offenses of being correct about all these things he was talking about. But being off narrative, he was targeted by then NIH leader Francis Collins and his colleague at the National Institutes of Health, Allergy and infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Emails later revealed how these two men went after Bhattacharya and his colleagues. The two officials orchestrated what they intended to be a devastating public takedown of Bhattacharya and his colleagues. That's from the email itself. Now, in what has to be one of the most remarkable turnabouts in fortune and fate, Dr. Bhattacharya now heads that agency, NIH, and says one of his missions is to make sure not to do what those men before him did. Here's my interview with Dr. Bhattacharya. As of very recently, you became acting director of cdc. How did that come about and what does that mean?
- [02:00]
B
Well, there was a leadership transition in HHS last week, and the White House called me last Friday and asked me if I'd be interested in being the acting director until there's a permanent director. I offered some names up for alternatives, but then the president called me a few days ago and it's hard to say no to the president. What it means is that I will still be the director of the nih. It's my main day job. But over the next couple of months, I'm going to go work with folks at the cdc, help get the agency in a place where the new director, whoever ends up being Senate confirmed, will have an organization that's running well so that they can get their priorities in place.
- [02:42]
A
Just a little inside baseball. What kind of conversation was that with President Trump when he called and was asking you? He probably knew when he called what he Wanted to ask you to do.
- [02:51]
B
It's funny because whenever, every single time that the kind of conversation is happened with the President, the actual focus of the conversation is 2 seconds. And then there's like the rest of the conversation is like other stuff he wants me to focus on. But yeah, it's always amazing to talk with him. He thinks in such different ways.
- [03:10]
A
Before COVID of course, you were a very well respected medical doctor and professor at Stanford. What is the short version, for people who don't know it, of how Covid changed everything for that?
- [03:22]
B
Well, as you said, I was a professor happily publishing in journals and very few people knew about me, but it was really fun to do that work. During COVID I was a very vocal opponent of lockdowns. I did a bunch of research that suggested that the lockdowns were not helping people, in fact, were causing tremendous harm to the poor, the children, the working class, all the school closures and all that. Stanford tried to get me fired, some folks. Then the former director of the National Institute of Health wrote an email to Tony Fauci calling for devastating takedown of me and my colleagues. Then, I don't know, somehow one thing led to another and I became the IH director.
- [04:05]
A
So what was it like when you were a professor at Stanford to learn that the head of NIH, Francis Collins at the time and Dr. Anthony Fauci, had been literally conspiring behind the scenes to smear and discredit you for what looked like legitimate work that turned out to be fully accurate?
- [04:25]
B
I mean, frankly, I was just disappointed, like, really disappointed, especially in Francis Collins. It's a man I admire still, actually for a scientific work still very much admired. He's a man of faith. I'm a Christian. And it was, yeah, it was just an enormous shock. I made a vow to myself that I will not act that way as director. My job isn't to do devastating takedowns of scientists I don't agree with. My job is to empower scientists to have discussions and have ideas and have the support from the NIH so that we can have a vigorous scientific debate that actually leads to progress.
- [05:05]
A
Prior to you probably even dreaming somebody might decide to recommend you for head of nih. You said that our public health agencies need to be reformed top to bottom. You haven't quite been at NIH a year, but what kinds of reforms have you already tried to put in place?
- [05:20]
B
I mean, we've done a lot in a year, actually. And it's interesting how much of a turnaround there's been Just as a bit of this, when it was announced I was going to be acting CDC director, I got lots of messages from inside the NIH saying, jay, please don't, don't go. So I took that as a good sign. We made a tremendous reform. So, for instance, one, we don't have any more dangerous gain of function research of the kind that very likely might have caused the pandemic. We have removed a lot of the sort of political, ideological research, the DEI kinds of stuff. It wasn't like a. It's one of those things where you tell scientists, look, the mission of the NIH is something we should all be behind. You invest in research that improves health and longevity. You don't need to do that politicized stuff anymore. And you'll hear people quite upset that those research things are not those politicized agendas, which are really just social justice kind of things that have no place at the nih. You'll hear people complain about it. But mostly what you see if you go behind the scenes is scientists are relieved that they don't have to have ideological tests for their work to be done. They can just focus on scientific work that has a chance of improving the health of everybody, including minority populations.
- [06:41]
A
I wonder what will be the impact, because I've spoken to researchers over the years that have understood, without it being spoken, that their research will not be approved unless it fits a certain political agenda. So they don't even bother to propose some research that needs to be done because they didn't think it would get approved. Do you sense we will see a big change in the breadth of topics and the types of things that are getting funded now?
- [07:04]
B
I mean, absolutely. I mean, I think removing the ideological kinds of projects leaves a lot more space for actual science. And as you said, it's also true that researchers feel empowered to focus on things that matter. And so it's hard to predict exactly what that will look like. The ingenuity of the researchers will determine that over time. But the cultural shift is enormous. And just being reminded why we're here, the purpose and the mission of the NIH is to do research that improves the health and longevity of the American people. First of all, everyone should be behind that mission. And then second, once you say that that's the mission, that we're only going to be focused on the mission, it frees you up from all of the baggage. You don't have to worry about looking over your shoulder that you're not ideologically pure enough. You just focus on science and that science that can translate over to solving the longevity problems that the United States has, the chronic disease problems, the real problems. I mean, the American people trust us with tens of billions of dollars. We owe the American people something in return. And that something is better health for everybody.
- [08:17]
A
The usual people who benefited from the system the way it existed for many decades and may have believed in it the way it was, don't think it failed, and have roundly criticized pretty much every move that you've tried to make as anti science. And the wrong way to go, what would you say to the critics, and I'm talking about even establishment medical entities such as MedPage, which is pharmaceutical industry supported, and others that come out pretty much roundly against any decision that's made as anti science.
- [08:46]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's not anti science. I mean, just fundamentally, what it is, is, is a refocusing of the agency where all we should have been. Just to give you a data point on this, right. So since 2010, the United States has seen no improvement in life or almost no improvement in life expectancy. Of course, it collapsed during the pandemic. You know, Sweden's barely, barely budged. And then only last year did we come back up to 2019 levels. If the NIH's mission is to support research that translates over into better health and longer life for Americans, well, the NIH for the last 15 years has failed in its mission. And so the idea that it's anti science or politicizing the agency to remove political agendas from the agency, it's almost overwhelming. When I see these stories, my general understanding of them is that it's people that benefited from the old system where the focus was in part on ideology. Now there's still, even in the old system, a lot of excellent biology that was funded. I want to empower those scientists that do that biology, that do that kind of research and have them focused on what they do best, science that improves health of people.
- [10:08]
A
Can you point to a couple of things you've learned since you took the position as head of NIH that you found surprising or that you, you just didn't even anticipate would be the case?
- [10:18]
B
Well, I think, I mean, I've learned a lot, but one of, in fact, the most fun part of the job is identifying people across the agency who have amazing scientific ideas. And you talk to them and they're like, surprised that I'm interested in wanting to support it. They just, it just, you can see there because for decades they were sitting in obscurity and unable to get their Ideas across. I'll give you an example of this. We have this thing, there's these new technology called organoids. They're essentially just artificial organs. You take some cells from somebody and you create organs out of the cells from a single person. And now you can do biology for that person that's personalized to that person. You can, you can a lot of like animal models you have like toxicology for instance you can do in human cells without hurting any humans that predicts better for how these, these toxins might affect humans rather than trying to animals where it doesn't, doesn't necessarily predict over. I found a researcher who was, spent her career on this, told me about it. I thought it was fantastic. I read about the literature and I said go for it. And I mean now we have a major program in this. The other thing I've learned on the, on the negative side, I now know I hadn't heard about red tape before. Cheryl I'm not naive. I now know it in a visceral way. What red tape actually. So I'll give you an example. The NIH fundamentally relies on scientific reviewers to look through 100,000 applications to get a year. You need a whole range of scientific reviews from the outside to review them.
- [12:00]
A
People who want to get grant money from the government for their many.
- [12:03]
B
But many were just offering their time to do reviews. Of course they also want to give grant money probably but, but, but I used to be a scientific reviewer actually for the NIH. They used to before 2010 or 11, I forget exact the date. They used to serve coffee at these, at these meetings like these. Imagine you're at some Bethesda Hotel at 7am reading some terrible grant application. They used to serve coffee. There was some GSA scandal in I think it was 2010. I forget exactly when and we were unable to serve any coffee. So I figured as NIH director going to sign the pen, we're going to start serving coffee to scientific reviewers at 7am so they can focus on these. Turns out it's going to take an act of Congress to allow me to serve coffee to reviewers.
- [12:50]
A
Who gave you that news? You just someone's like, you can't do that.
- [12:52]
B
Yeah. I was like I went around to like all the folks at the NIH and then to folks in Congress and others, I'm like oh, can I just serve coffee? I mean because every single person like looking at me like jay, are you crazy? You can't serve coffee.
- [13:07]
A
Oh my goodness. Well, that leads to my next question. Maybe it's part of the answer, have you had to change or manage your expectations? I think sometimes it's very easy to be a critic on the outside when we see what needs to be improved and then you're hit with the reality of what it takes when you're actually there.
- [13:22]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely. I mean, there's no way that that wouldn't have happened. Right. I mean, I knew a lot about the NIH before, but you don't really know viscerally until you're inside. And mostly I've been pleasantly surprised. Like, there's stuff that I thought would be very difficult to accomplish that's happened very, very quickly and easily. Stuff like the coffee, that's been more difficult. But. And I think that, that, I mean, again, I sort of knew this from the outside. There's a lot of amazing scientists here and amazing scientists across the country. They just need to be given a sense of real mission and purpose. Right. And that's been my focus. It's not to try to, like, destroy the agency. I mean, of course there's been some leadership changes that I think were necessary, but the focus isn't to, like, dismantle science. It's to actually empower American science to solve the health problems of this country.
- [14:17]
A
There are people connected to or insight NIH who are still leaking or feeding or talking about criticism and getting the press to print these things. One thing I read recently was how there are vacancies as NIH directors, implying there are too many. What's going on?
- [14:33]
B
Yeah.
- [14:34]
A
In. In the little picture, what do you say to that criticism? And in the big picture, do you feel like there is a lot of cultural stagnation here? That's. That just does not want to come on board with a new director.
- [14:46]
B
I think that it's. I'd say that when I first got here, it was the day that Elon and Doge had announced a large layoff and several of the institute directors that they also were let go around that time. I'll say just broadly nothing specific about anybody in particular, but I think that the agency as a whole had been essentially led more or less the same way for decades. And it's been decades of a lot of great successes in that time. I don't mean to downplay this, but I think it's very important for scientific agencies to have leadership changes regularly from time to time, bring in new scientific ideas and so on. We've been working very hard to identify candidates to fill all these institute positions. And it's actually quite exciting because they're bringing in new ideas. The new leadership then will lead in new scientific directions and a huge amount of promise. I keep hearing, I keep reading these stories how nobody's applying these positions. But then I look and like there's hundreds of applications and like, so I don't a lot. I didn't actually viscerally understand fake news until I took this position. I was like, I'll see the reality. Hundreds of applications and I'll see a story which says nobody's applying. I'm like, where did they get this story from? I mean, it's just absolutely false.
- [16:07]
A
Dr. Anthony Fauci was the head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as such was a very influential, powerful figure. Is there a new Dr. Anthony Fauci in the works or at NIH?
- [16:21]
B
No. With some of the changes we're making, I don't think it will ever be another person just like that. I mean, he was the head of the National Institute of Allergy Infectious Disease for almost four decades. He built the agency essentially in his image. The focus of the agency was on the things that he really cared about. Right. So hiv, a reasonable thing to care about, of course, civilian biodefense. And then other, it's the Institute of Allergy Infectious Disease. And all the other stuff about allergy and immunology was in the other bucket. So the new leader, the acting director, is a man named Jeff Tobinberger, who's actually a longtime NIH scientist, even worked with Tony Fauci. But he wanted a new vision for the place, focused on diseases that actually infect humans, that are actually causing damage to humans. So including hiv. Right. So we have a new program where we're directing the huge advances that have been made in HIV treatment and prevention to actually eradicate HIV or to reduce the transmission of HIV to near zero. President Trump put this as a goal in 2019 under our leadership, we're going to actually achieve that by 2030. And then a real program on immunology, a real program analogy. The idea is you don't think about bugs by themselves. You think about how when you're infected, how does a person respond as a person centered focus for allergy, infectious disease, rather than separately thinking about allergy and immunology and infectious disease separate from each other bug by bug by bug. And this idea of civilian biodefense, where you're. Where we're going to go to the bat caves of China, pull viruses out of bat caves, put them in a lab in, you know, in a foreign lab in Wuhan make them more transmissible and dangerous. I mean, that entire program is gone. Gone. We're not going to fund anything like that ever again.
- [18:30]
A
What would you say is your overarching goal if you had to kind of synopsize it into a sentence or a slogan?
- [18:37]
B
Let's use science to make America healthy. I love Make America Healthy Again because it's one of these things where I know people think of it as controversial, but I have no idea why. The American people entrust us with tens of billions of dollars and they give us a mission to use that money to do science that makes them healthy. I don't see how that's a controversial thing at all. And it shouldn't be. It's interesting because we are in a science race with China. It's almost like a Sputnik moment to me. You're seeing the massive Chinese investments in biomedicine often taking IP from us like that the NIH invests in and other companies invest in. We need to be serious about it. We need to remove all the ideological agendas that have sort of come into the NIH budget. And I focus just get rid of all that. And that's what I've done. I've removed all that. And then challenge the American scientists to really focus on what they can do best.
- [19:40]
A
Have I already pinned you down about the recover study?
- [19:44]
B
You have not asked me about the recover study.
- [19:45]
A
Okay, so here's my thing. When I found out that was going on, this is before you, they were spending a billion dollars. They have tons of test subjects, and they're looking at it sort of long Covid. What treatments can we develop? That cued to me, oh, pharmaceutical industry wants to sell treatments to people who have long Covid. And I was communicating with the study folks and asking them questions. They're being very nice. And I said, well, how are you differentiating in your data between people who are injured by long Covid and people who are injured by vaccine or some combination? Because most of your long Covid victims were vaccinated. And they quit answering the questions. And they will not communicate with me now. And from what I've read, they're not differentiating now privately, they may know who is vaccinated with what. And these data points seem so important to me because no one else is gathering on a broad scale aggressively, you know, adverse events from COVID vaccine in a way that's really, you know, like, I think should have been done from the start. So what do you know about the recover study? Am I right? That they're not differentiating. And are you concerned about that?
- [20:46]
B
I mean, I think the recovery study was supposed to be focused on long Covid. Of course, it's like a billion and a half dollars, much of it spent before I became NIH director. Just stepping back, there are patients who are injured by Covid that are suffering long Covid. There are patients that were injured by the vaccines. The science of, of like how to help people with long Covid and vaccine injury. For COVID vaccine injury actually I think are linked, like they can learn from each other. And so the way that I'm thinking about this is I don't have the billion plus dollars that's already spent. It's water on the bridge in some sense. There have been some advances out of it, of course. But what I want to do is I want to get answers for long COVID patients and for vaccine injured patients. Both of them deserve good answers. I've seen so many products that are on the market that have not been validated and so they're patients being taken advantage of and there are lots and lots of promising treatments. I want to get great answers for both Covid for patients who have long Covid lingering symptoms for Covid that are debilitating as well as for vaccine injured patients. The vaccine injured patients often are actually both are often gaslit. Right. They're told that they're not actually suffering what they're suffering. The thing I want to send, the message I want to send to those patients by actions, by like actual research that we're doing is that we're taking their condition seriously, that we're not going to ignore it, we're not going to throw it under the rug. I mean, I think a lot of times what you saw, Cheryl, was that you saw this idea that if we study vaccine injury that then it'll undermine confidence in vaccines. I think the opposite is true. If we take vaccine injury seriously, that we are addressing it, trying to reduce the likelihood of them happening and then help give patients or vaccine injured treatments, then there will be more confidence in vaccines rather than the other way around. It's a flipping over of the mindset I think that led to the, the observations you had.
- [22:59]
A
Is there a plan to study vaccine injury treatments?
- [23:03]
B
Yeah, we're working on that. So one of the things that Tony Fauci's old chop NIAID is going to be doing is studying vaccine injury.
- [23:16]
A
If you'd like to see my interview with Dr. Bhattacharya and learn some more information about all of this, I hope you'll watch my Sunday television program Full Measure. On Sunday, March 1, you can look@CherylakKisson.com and click the Full Measure tab to find a list of stations and times. Or you can always just go online and watch at fullmeasure news. We will post the latest program, usually around 11:00 Eastern Time on Sundays after it's aired on our television stations. And if you happen to miss it on March 1st, don't worry because you can always look back at FullMeasure News and watch past programs. We also have an unadvertised YouTube channel where it's easy to watch all of our segments. We're going 11 years now and there's so much good reporting there that's still impactful and meaningful today. Even the stuff from 10 years ago. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast, and if you did, you'll share it with your friends. Subscribe to it and leave us a great review. Check out my other podcast, the Cheryl Akison Podcast. And to support independent journalism, there's a couple of things you can do. You can check out my latest bestseller because proceeds go to independent reporting causes. That's Follow the How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails. You can also visit cheryl Atkison.com and click the store tab. Proceeds from the Cheryl Atkison store also support independent reporting causes. There are all kinds of great products with interesting slogans and original sayings such as do your own research, make up your own mind, think for yourself.