Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
speaker
188 appearances
9 recordings
5 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 11 May
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 2.
Appearances
um and it was irresponsible for the leaders of of of the usaid to allow the good things to be surrounded and marbled with with with politicized nonsense um and uh i think that in a sense the transition is as to making sure the nih focuses on actual science that actually advances human health um that's that's what we've been doing um i you know i don't want to get too far into the budget because it's a budget fights are always not not fun to talk about but um
I think that there's a lot of support, even from the president himself wrote a letter to his science advisor, Michael Kratios, committing the U.S. to be the premier nation in biomedicine in the 21st century. And the NIH is going to play a key role in that aspiration.
You know, one of the things, okay, so this is probably not, shouldn't be, shouldn't have shocked me, but it did. The way that the press reports some things are so distorted, it's almost, I mean, it's mind blowing. Let me give you an example. We found, one of the things I found is that So researchers often work with foreign universities, foreign labs. It's normal.
I mean, it's not like international collaboration science is normal. The way the NIH paid for these things was by something called sub awards. So an American university, some university in the United States, researcher says, I'm going to work with somebody in France. We give money to the American university. Then the university then gives the money to the lab in France or something like that.
Anywhere, right? Doesn't matter. What I found out is that the NIH, which gives money to the US university, can't track really effectively or audit the money that's spent in that foreign lab. So the most crucial example of this is Wuhan. We can't get them to give us their lab notebooks for their experiments. We sent them money.
So I put in a system that requires the same level of auditing power and scrutiny over the foreign labs that we give money to as we have of our American labs. It's a system, it's a little bit of a transition to get there, but it's not that disruptive. We're still allowing foreign collaborations to happen. It's just that now the NIH is going to be able to audit what's happening over there.
The media reported as if I were banning all foreign collaborations. What we're doing is we're being able to audit foreign what's happening with American money in foreign institutions. I just, it's mind blowing to me, Vince, like how distorting a reporting can be, something that's really good and allow, in fact, will allow foreign collaborators to happen in a way that's like,
that the American people can be proud of instead is reported as, oh, we're some anti-science group that wants to kill all scientific collaboration. It's so far from the truth, it's remarkable. And yet the media reported it happily without even really asking me what was going on.
Thank you, Vincent. So it was a pleasure to talk.
What we're going to do is make sure that those prices become much closer to equal, like a competitive market you'd expect. You may think of it as somehow it's going after drug companies. Actually, it's helping drug companies.
Because what we're also going to do with this order, what President Trump has done with this order, is he's said to European governments, look, if you are taking advantage of the drug companies by forcing them to charge very, very low prices, we're going to defend American drug companies in Europe.
At the same time, we're standing up for the American consumer who's been paying far too high prices for far too long.
Oh my God, Idan!
Yeah!
What we're going to do is make sure that those prices become much closer to equal, like a competitive market you'd expect. Right now what's happening is the American people are subsidizing in large fraction the research and development efforts for drug companies around the world by the higher prices that we pay. With this new order, Europe will share the burden of that.
And in fact, if you may think of it as somehow it's going after drug companies, actually it's helping drug companies.
Because what we're also going to do with this order, what President Trump has done with this order, is he's said to European governments, look, if you are taking advantage of the drug companies by forcing them to charge very, very low prices, we're going to defend American drug companies.
If confirmed, I will establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the NIH. Over the last few years, top NIH officials oversaw a culture of cover-up, obfuscation, and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs.
The proper role of scientists in a pandemic is to answer basic questions that policymakers have about what the right policy should be. Our role isn't to make decisions to say you shouldn't be saying goodbye to your grandfather as he's dying in a hospital. It shouldn't be to say you can't have a funeral because it's too dangerous.
The scientists say here's what the risks are, and then you decide whether you take it.
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