NIH head, still angry about COVID, wants a second scientific revolution
At the end of January, Washington, DC, saw an extremely unusual event. The MAHA Institute, which was set up to advocate for some of the most profoundly unscientific ideas of our time, hosted leaders of the best-funded scientific organization on the planet, the National Institutes of Health. Instead of a hostile reception, however, Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the NIH, was greeted as a hero by the audience, receiving a partial standing ovation when he rose to speak.
Over the ensuing five hours, the NIH leadership and MAHA Institute moderators found many areas of common ground: anger over pandemic-era decisions, a focus on the failures of the health care system, the idea that we might eat our way out of some health issues, the sense that science had lost people’s trust, and so on. And Bhattacharya and others clearly shaped their messages to resonate with their audience.
The reason? MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) is likely to be one of the only political constituencies supporting Bhattacharya’s main project, which he called a “second scientific revolution.”
