NIH Director Bhattacharya's "Culture of Dissent"
A Grizzly Fantasy of Incorrectness
We begin today's article with a short story about a young woman who had her life destroyed to entertain one foolish man's completely unscientific fantasy.
The 2005 Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man focuses on the self-inflicted tragedy of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend. Timothy had a completely absurd dream that he was a beloved friend, a “Grizzly People,” to bears: living among them, playfighting with them, and would spend extensive periods of time in close proximity to these wild animals. Treadwell believed, foolishly, that he was being an effective advocate for these majestic creatures instead of simply intruding upon their home.
Treadwell and his girlfriend would go on to be found mauled to death and half-eaten by one of the bears he imagined to be a benevolent friend in 2003. That same year, the legendary zoologist Kratt brothers Chris and Martin, started a new show called Be the Creature for National Geographic which opened with an episode dedicated to brown bears. They took a wildly different approach on safety precautions.
Our natural world, as beautiful as it can be, is not a democracy in which the rules are open to negotiation. Mother Nature can be a cruel dictator, and she is not afraid to backhand you into last Tuesday if you arrogantly choose to act foolishly in her domain. While most wild animals are more afraid of you than you are of them, outdoorsmen will generally employ a number of precautions to avoid a risky encounter: bear bells, bear spray, and even firearms to stay safe when traversing the backyard of predators such as cougars and bears. This is not widely considered to be "living in fear," but instead effective preparedness.
Yet when it comes to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, those who employ mitigations such as N95 respirators are shamelessly labeled as "living in fear," even after countless millions have been killed or disabled by COVID-19. Something that America's new Director of the National Institute of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, shamelessly used to ridicule scientists and medical experts in his own masturbatory crusade against imaginary "Covidian" heretics.
Bhattacharya's Failed Vision for the NIH
Many on social media, mainly those who falsely branded the SARS-CoV-2 virus as harmless and benevolent, have treated this horrific mass death event as nothing more than a "game" to be "won" on behalf of "Team Reality." They see Jay Bhattacharya's confirmation as Director of a now crippled & heavily politicized NIH as a "victory" over those dastardly "Covidians." Of course, pandemics are not child's games to be "won," but instead disasters to be mitigated, saving as many lives as possible.
You can't "win" a pandemic, especially if your idea of "victory" results in widespread disease outbreaks, constantly sick kids, and a brain drain of scientists & medical researchers to other countries. That's not victory - that's losing, you pitiful fools.
Jay Bhattacharya as NIH Director is unprecedented - the history of previous NIH Directors does not include a single economist - which Jay is - but instead doctors who actually practiced medicine or worked in scientific research. Bhattacharya did neither, instead spending the five years spreading vicious lies and insults about them. As medical doctor Kashif Pirzada tweeted last November:
"Only in America can a man with zero scientific training and zero medical background, take control of the country's foremost scientific establishment."
Jay’s agenda, as laid out by Vinay Prasad of UCSF on Substack, is to produce propaganda instead of useful medical and scientific research: "Jay will create a portfolio of funding to investigate the harms of ... unproven draconian COVID19 measures. This will create a lasting body of scholarship which will deter future public health tyrants." This is policy-based evidence making - or more simply: propaganda.
Jay falsely portrayed himself as a "dissident scientist" who was "censored" by The Medical Establishment(TM) in order to personally profit from the largest mass death event in American history. Sadly, many fell for this absolute hogwash. As medical doctor Tyler Black wrote on Twitter last December:
"Here is GBD author Jay Bhattacharya in the oval office with the president discussing policy. Here he is on CNN. Here he is on FOX news. Oh, and he was nominated for NIH director. HE'S SO CANCELLED!"
So just what will the NIH look like under Bhattacharya? Let's look at a comment from (take this as you will) anonymous Reddit user "throway13025:"
"I am at NIH...I just want people to understand that if they fire all 28 of the IC directors, [this] is a significant loss to the American people. The IC directors are supposed to be leaders in the disease research area of their institute. Replacing them with a political appointee would do irreparable damage to the research and our mission. They decide what we study based on the most promising scientific discoveries of our time...Removing the IC Directors and replacing with political means unqualified political people get to decide what science we do, not the experts in the field."
Mass layoffs at Bhattacharya's NIH include principal scientists tasked with preventing future infectious disease outbreaks, neural disorders, and even an award-winning scientist, Richard Youle, who made important strides on Parkinson's disease. As an economist, Bhattacharya is woefully inept and unaccomplished in comparison - Youtube videos spewing nonsense from the safety of his office won't be finding the solutions to these public health challenges. In further "revenge" on Anthony Fauci, his wife, head of the NIH bioethics office, was fired as well.
While Jay lies to NIH staff that he promises "transparency," and “academic freedom,” this is clearly a campaign of censorship and purges of scientists and doctors who actually saved lives, instead of ranting foolishly on social media. According to Bluesky user Alt NIH Bluesky:
“When he says ‘chronic disease’, read ‘anti-vax, ignore real science and medicine’. When he says ‘Reproducibility’, read ‘use issues in some fields as an excuse to tear down science…He's destroying innovation. When he says ‘academic freedom’ this is just a full-on lie. Bhattacharya's billionaire patrons, including Trump, Musk, Bradley, Uihlein have worked to suppress speech on campus, suppress academic freedom, and strip civil rights. For them ‘freedom’ means ‘boost rightwing lies."
Much like Treadwell refusing safety mitigations around grizzly bears, Bhattacharya is destroying the tools so he can throw American children into the gaping maw of the many diseases that threaten our health - as part of his narcissistic, unscientific fantasy.
Jay’s Problematic Dissent Fetish
Treadwell prioritized his fantasies about grizzly bears as benevolent friends over the overwhelming, well documented science that human beings and grizzly bears don't tend to get along very well in close proximity. Sorry Timothy, but you cannot truly love and appreciate all the incredible creatures of Mother Nature without a healthy respect for them. Without the intrusion of pesky humans, in the case of the grizzly bear. Timothy was a "dissenting" voice, and he not only got himself killed, but his girlfriend as well. A truly shameful and disgusting legacy.
One that Bhattacharya shares many times over when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic & his role in selling the virus to the public, and all the disease outbreaks which will follow that a compromised NIH will be unable to fight.
At his Senate confirmation hearings, Bhattacharya said the following: "I will establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent...at the NIH...top NIH officials oversaw...a lack of tolerance for ideas that differ from theirs. Dissent is the very essence of science. I will foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives."
We can already see what's happening at the NIH now, and it's clear Bhattacharya did nothing but completely lie before Congress. The American people should be outraged that the halls of democracy were desecrated by someone who was not forthcoming about his true intentions of how he plans to reshape the world's leading hub for medical & scientific research into a toxic propaganda outlet.
In fact, Jay Bhattacharya is the first NIH Director in history to have a lawsuit brought against him within his first week on the job. The plaintiffs allege Bhattacharya has engaged in a “reckless and illegal purge to stamp out NIH-funded research that addresses topics and populations that they disfavor.”
What a legacy you’re building, Jay!
My Uninformed Opinions Overrule Your Well-Researched Facts
Let us take a moment to interrogate this premise, however, that the NIH has suffered a "free speech" problem since 2020.
When it comes to the hard sciences such as medicine, not all opinions are created equal. An improper dosage of a drug or supplement can cause serious harm, possibly even death. Children are finding this out the hard way thanks to Bhattacharya's boss. As it turns out, medical and scientific consensus can often be a good thing. "Dissenting voices" aren't inherently correct or worth spotlighting merely for going against the grain. As medical doctor Jeremy Faust wrote for Inside Medicine,
"The soon-to-be NIH Director can't count to two."
When brought to court to testify as an "expert witness," U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw found that Jay spoke with a "demeanor and tone...suggest that he is advancing a personal agenda." A judge in Manitoba found that Bhattacharya's testimony "was contradicted by a range of evidence, including his own sources." Multiple courts of law found that Jay Bhattacharya prioritizes his uninformed opinions over hard evidence.
Compare this to Alina Chan, who made quite a name for herself by hastily assembling circumstantial arguments that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a Chinese laboratory while lacking any real background in infectious diseases, and later wrote a book, Viral, alongside Matt Ridley, who championed COVID-19 infections in the unvaccinated as "saving lives," ignorant of how this got many killed and disabled. Alina seems to endorse the ideal that the best solution for lab-made viruses is to infect tens of millions of unvaccinated children with them in rapid succession.
More troubling is…You “believe?” Is mere faith, contradicting years of established patterns of dishonest and unprofessional behavior, attacking medical doctors and research scientists, all that matters? That doesn't sound very “evidence-based” at all, Alina. Instead, Bhattacharya's initial actions as NIH Director have been anything *but* "encouraging" of free speech in scientific research. Let’s review, Alina!
From The Sick Times: RECOVER grants for Long COVID pathobiology research are among those cut under new NIH directive
Vaccine scientist Paul Bieniasz proclaimed via Twitter:
"Just heard that our NIH funding to learn how to make broadly effective vaccines against pandemic threat coronaviruses is being terminated...Those utter, fuckwit, shithead charlatans will likely redirect the funding to idiotic studies of whether the MMR vaccine causes autism."
Epidemiologist Whitney Robinson shared on Bluesky:
"1,000 more NIH biomedical research projects were defunded with no notice."
"The general vibe we are getting across NIH institutes is deeply bleak - that the agency is nearly, if not already dead. Top people are leaving or have left. Nearly everyone's looking for other jobs. People still care about what NIH was, but are growing resigned to its death."
This sure as hell doesn’t sound like “scientific freedom of speech” at all! This looks a lot more like mass censorship of scientists to advance a destructive personal agenda in which one's uninformed opinions are elevated over hard science. Hey, you decide.
Bhattacharya's Treadwell Doctrine
It's one thing to thoughtlessly throw your own life away as a result of your foolish delusions about science and nature. It's another to get someone else killed because of your ridiculous dreams of peace and harmony living in close proximity alongside grizzly bears, as Timothy Treadwell did.
Jay Bhattacharya was more than happy to condemn countless Americans to death and disability from COVID-19, a disease that this woefully ignorant economist refused to respect, much less understand. Much like Treadwell's beloved grizzly bears, Bhattacharya's beloved SARS-CoV-2 virus is a part of nature. Now, he works to compromise the National Institute of Heath's ability to fight other viruses and diseases as well, treating unscientific quackery as legitimate "dissent" that must be elevated and defended from informed, expert criticism.
Why should innocent American children be forced to suffer from preventable illness, disability, and death caused by Jay's fantasy of himself leading some obscene crusade against "Nefarious Healthcare Overlords?" How is these years of breathless ranting any different some Treadwell’s immature screeching at the National Park Service?
In November 2021, Jay Bhattacharya cherry picked a single study to argue that Long COVID disability was not actually caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, declaring that "there are more pressing health needs for the $1.1 billion that the NIH will spend on long COVID," caused by the virus he mischaracterized. Years later, the overwhelming consensus of medical research on Long COVID has only proven Bhattacharya's statement all the more foolish. Many insisted that you were a bad person if you suggested that Jay's uninformed tweets were inferior to countless medical studies.
As NIH Director, Bhattacharya's childish antics will only contribute to poor health outcomes for countless Americans, who will needlessly suffer as a result. The damage that comes from treating the world's leading hub of medical and scientific research as a plaything for one's childish revenge fantasies against "covidians" will haunt this nation, and potentially the world, for years long after Bhattacharya leaves a totally crippled and ineffective National Institute of Health.
Lives thrown away for one immature man’s ridiculous fantasies. Yet, Bhattacharya never had to listen to the final moments of the children who died in the pediatric ICU thanks to the virus he lobbied to get them infected with.
The Director of the National Institute of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, is a disgrace.
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