Science, Politics, and Evasion: Lessons from Bhattacharya’s Senate HELP Testimony
If you’ve been reading my previous posts, you will not be shocked to learn that I am no fan of NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya. That has not changed since watching his testimony this morning before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
As the foundations of American public health have been threatened at best and crippled at worst, and as America experiences a senseless, avoidable measles epidemic, Americans deserved answers. What they got was gaslighting and evasion (as well as a glimpse at the sorry state of the United States Senate).
Let’s start with the cagey responses that evaded direct answers to things for which there is ample scientific evidence:
Bernie Sanders: Do vaccines cause autism?
Jay Bhattacharya: I do not believe that the measles vaccine causes autism.
Sanders: I didn’t ask about measles. Do vaccines cause autism?
Bhattacharya: I have not seen a study that suggests any single vaccine causes autism.
As much as those testifying on the Hill seem to categorically revile “yes or no” questions, in a normal world, the Director of the National Institutes of Health would be able to assert clearly, without evasion, “No, vaccines do not cause autism.”
But of course, we’re not in a normal world, so instead we get the much narrower reference to a “single vaccine,” which raises questions about how he is thinking about the MMR vaccine, which is a combination of three vaccines in a single shot. In fact, the dangerously misguided change to America’s childhood vaccine schedule was focused on having fewer shots per visit, bizarrely relying on the country case of Denmark, which had a recent whooping cough epidemic and which has a much more robust safety net to support its citizenry if they fall ill.
What’s more, Bhattacharya pushed back on some of the Democrats’ (factually accurate) vaccine statements, saying “You can’t just say vaccines. You have to say vaccine-by-vaccine,” and said that some vaccines are less well-studied than MMR.
Repeat after me, Jay: Vaccines do not cause autism. And no, you don’t need to rush to RFK Jr.’s defense, claiming that he has been “caricatured quite unfairly.” We see the interviews, and we see the context in which he is questioning sound science (might I add, without a scientific background).
Sprinkled throughout Bhattacharya’s responses were conservative talking points that would have made Justice Alito happy (and that’s never a good thing). In response to Patty Murray’s question about research with fetal tissue, Bhattacharya replied, “There are alternatives available. Using tissue from aborted embryos – aborted babies – is not necessary for science.” Subtle, Jay. Subtle. Patty Murray isn’t wrong when she called this a “political decision by the NIH.”
Now let’s dive further into the gaslighting. The lies. There were a lot of them.
“We didn’t cut any research funding.” “I do not believe patients’ care was disrupted” when clinical trials were forced to cease operations due to funding issues. “There is no war on science.”
Talk to virtually anyone in a public health school about what government-funded research has been like over the last year. Finding researchers whose grants were canceled because they were out of alignment with the administration’s priorities is like shooting fish in a barrel.
To be sure, grant funding was always competitive. But under previous administrations – whether Democratic or Republican – the focus was on the aims. The promise of the research. The innovation. The qualifications. Under this administration, vast realms of public health research have been swept up into the abysmally misguided “DEI” executive order because we deign to acknowledge that structural racism plays a role in health, or that we’re in a Black maternal health crisis, or that ensuring vaccine equity is an important public health goal.
But it’s 2026, so that’s crazy talk.
And sure, many many grants were restored. But it wasn’t because the NIH was being charitable or pro-science. It was because of court orders to address illegal grant terminations. “We recognized judicial legitimacy” doesn’t deserve a pat on the back — it’s literally the bare minimum (though too often under the Trump Administration, even that low bar isn’t met.
To say that there is no war on science when people studying health inequity or vaccines cannot qualify for grant funding is as baffling as it is infuriating.
And for Bhattacharya to blame researchers rather than the NIH for disruption of clinical trials’ operations – which he asserted to Maggie Hassan – feels akin to an arsonist blaming a homeowner for not having critical documents in order before their house was burned to the ground. “I ordered that there would be continuity of care” is far from feasible when support is being wildly disrupted, with limited communication amid frequent and chaotic changes… chaos that has proven to be a feature and not a bug of this administration.
One thing that was unmistakable in the hearing was Bill Cassidy’s buyer’s remorse.
Jay Bhattacharya: We have to reestablish trust in public health. If you just double down on the same, we’re not gonna change it.
Bill Cassidy: Now we have a measles outbreak among those who did not trust. To further cast doubt upon the vaccines for no scientific reason - that’s not gonna increase trust.
He stepped in it, and he knows it. Be prepared for a robust Bill Cassidy Rehabilitation Tour, and don’t let him get away with it. As a physician who is not conspiratorial, Cassidy cannot plausibly feign the ignorance of many of his colleagues (*cough* Tuberville). He knew the science, and he knew the lies he was being fed, but he was too concerned about a primary contest to bother prioritizing the public health system on which we all depend.
Of course, this hearing had the classic “wow, what state had to scrape the bottom of the barrel so much that they elected this guy to office?” moments. Apparently the junior senator from Indiana, Jim Banks, needs to be reminded that just because Massachusetts and Indiana have roughly the same populations doesn’t mean that Indiana is entitled to equivalent levels of NIH funding… at least not until Indiana develops multiple research hospitals on par with Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (to start… and let’s not forget the many premier universities even just on the red line despite the This Is Spinal Tap joke that Boston isn’t much of a college town).
But in between those moments of “I cannot believe these are the people running our government” when looking at the Senate majority, there was a much greater sense of not surprise, but nevertheless fury at Bhattacharya’s unwillingness to confront the reality that under his leadership and the direction of Donald Trump, the NIH has deeply damaged our once strong public health institutions, sowed widespread distrust in highly effective vaccines – distrust that will literally kill people (we had three measles deaths last year and this year’s case count is already dwarfing 2025) – and it’s unclear how or when that trust will be rebuilt.
I basically grew up working on political campaigns, and certainly was a political junkie from the outset. (I hope you were sitting down for that breaking news.) And unlike many of my friends, students, and others, I didn’t come out of the gate with particularly cynical impressions of those in politics – I don’t hero worship and I know that there is a certain type of person who enters that line of work, but I believe that we can and should demand responsiveness, empathy, and accountability, and while I don’t want to make the perfect the enemy of the good, I don’t believe that we must settle when it comes to critical issues that strike at the heart of our values. Unfortunately, I don’t get the impression that that is the modal perception of our elected officials, let alone those within the Trump Administration.
The dedication to public service and public health that we can and should demand of our NIH Director wasn’t evident, and in its place we get entitlement to lie and evade questioning about critical issues affecting health care access, research agendas, and more. And we should not be comforted by his assertion to Patty Murray, “I can guarantee that we will focus our clinical trial offers on advancing health and not an ideology.”