The Most Feared Person at the NIH Is a Vaccine Researcher Plucked From Obscurity

Trump-RFK Jr.’s NIH Grapples With One Alarming Disaster After Another of Its Own Making

It’s been an especially tumultuous week for the Trump NIH amid alarming new reporting on multiple fronts – from promoting an anti-vax conspiracy embracer as head of its National Cancer Program while failing miserably to fill critical vacancies following a mass exodus of career staff and experts; a new lawsuit over an alleged illegal firing involving research cuts that will harm public health; and a new effort to claw back critical health researc…

The Most Feared Person at the NIH Is a Vaccine Researcher Plucked From Obscurity

Updated at 12:29 p.m. on December 17, 2025 When Donald Trump nominated Jay Bhattacharya to be the director of the National Institutes of Health, a shake-up seemed inevitable. Typically, the agency—a $48 billion grant-making institution and the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research—has been led by a medical researcher with extensive administrative experience. Bhattacharya was a health economist without specialized training in infec…