Critics have strongly criticised Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), after he defended the winding down of funding for mRNA vaccine research, claiming the vaccines failed to “earn public trust”. Bhattacharya’s comments appeared in a Washington Post op-ed supporting health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s decision to terminate $500m in federal funding for mRNA vaccine research, a move Kennedy justified by saying he had “reviewed the science”. Experts say the evidence does not support ending the research.
Jeremy Berg, former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH, said it was “astounding” that Bhattacharya blamed Biden-era policies for distrust in mRNA vaccines, given that he and his associates had “done so much to diminish the appreciation of these important medical accomplishments”. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the question was not whether the vaccines had gained public trust, but whether they worked and were safe – to which the answer was “clearly yes”.
Bhattacharya argued that while the mRNA platform was “promising”, it had failed the test of use for a public health emergency because it lacked credibility. However, experts note that the Covid vaccines ultimately succeeded in stopping symptomatic and severe disease. Jonathan Howard, a physician, accused Bhattacharya of spreading “disinformation” about vaccines, treating rare, mild side-effects as worse than death from Covid.
Joshua Weitz, a professor of biology at the University of Maryland, said Bhattacharya’s arguments failed to acknowledge the role of current health department leadership and anti-vaccine influencers in undermining public trust. The NIH director has previously claimed he was a victim of censorship for his dissenting views during the pandemic.
