WATCH LIVE: Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya testifies at Senate confirmation hearing for NIH director

Sorry sir, if your name comes out just a little bit different every time I say it, I apologize in advance. Importantly, NIH grants have increased biomedical research capacities in states that otherwise would not have had sufficient resources to invest. My state, Louisiana, has received roughly $500 million through NIH's Institutional Development Award program, allowing institutions to bring life-saving cures and treatments to people in my state and around the world. However, NIH at times appears to have prioritized funding for risk-averse, incremental science. There's concern the current system incentivizes established scientists who study already proven concepts rather than younger scientists with unproven ideas that have potential for major medical breakthroughs. While this practice may ensure the short-term success of federal grants, it limits groundbreaking discoveries. I've discussed this with you, sir, previously and look forward to hearing more today. NIH is facing other serious challenges. During the COVID pandemic, there is a general loss in trust in public health and scientific institutions. To restore that trust, officials need to be more transparent and provide reassurance that they are publishing health guidance that is best for Americans' health and not biased in any way. You have indicated you would like to promote a free and open debate at NIH, including among scientists to disagree, and this is encouraging. The NIH is at an inflection point. If confirmed as NIH director, you'll be tasked with leading an agency that desperately needs reform. Last year I released several proposals outlining ways to modernize NIH, improving operations to better serve the American taxpayer. I look forward to hearing your vision today and working with you on these proposals if you are confirmed. With that, I recognize Senator Sanders for his opening statement.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Bhattacharya, for being with us. Today we will be considering the nomination of President Trump's nominee to be the director of the NIH, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. The NIH, with a budget of $48 billion, is the largest funder of medical research in the world. This research has led to new treatments and prescription drugs that have significantly improved the lives of Americans and people throughout the world, and I think all of us should be very proud of those accomplishments. But having said that, let me say a few words about my concerns. I don't have to tell any American that the healthcare system in our country is broken and it is failing. We spend almost twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other industrialized nation, yet we have 85 million people who are uninsured or underinsured. We don't have enough doctors, nurses, dentists, mental health specialists. Not only is our life expectancy four years lower than other wealthy countries, the bottom 50% in this country live on average 7 years shorter lives than the top 1%. In other words, being working class or low-income in America is in many ways a death sentence. If you're rich, you live long; working class, 7 years younger. And very relevant to the hearing that we are conducting right now, we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. In some cases we pay more than 10 times what our friends in Canada or Europe pay. In my view, not only has the federal government not effectively regulated the price of prescription drugs, but the taxpayers of our country have over the years provided hundreds of billions of dollars in research and development into new prescription drugs that have provided enormous financial benefits to some of the most profitable pharmaceutical companies in the world. In 2023, when I had the privilege of chairing this committee, this committee released a report that found that the average price of new treatments that NIH scientists helped invent over the past 20 years is $111,000. In virtually all cases, American taxpayers are paying far, far more than people in other countries for the exact same medicine that the NIH and taxpayers helped develop. We developed the drug, and then we end up paying 10 times more than other countries for the drug that our taxpayer dollars helped develop. For example, the company that makes Xtandi charged Americans with prostate cancer over $179,000 for Xtandi, while the exact same drug can be purchased in Japan for just $18,000. We do the research, we pay for it as taxpayers, and then we get ripped off by the companies. In my view, we need an NIH director who is prepared to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and use every tool at his or her disposal to substantially lower the cost of prescription drugs. Not a new issue, an issue that people on this committee have been talking about for decades. But with all due respect, Dr. Bhattacharya, President Trump will not be giving you that authority. I don't know what your views are on the subject, you're not going to have that authority. That authority will rest with Mr. Elon Musk. Over the past several weeks, it has become abundantly clear that it really does not matter who the president nominates to be director of the NIH or the SEC, and I don't mean to be disrespectful in saying that, but it doesn't matter who he nominates to be director of the NIH or the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Education, or the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. The real person in charge of all these federal agencies is Mr. Elon Musk, and that will continue to be the case no matter who the Senate confirms to these positions. It is my understanding that Mr. Musk and his minions at DOGE have moved to terminate some 1,200 employees at the NIH already, 6% of its staff. Further, I've been told Mr. Musk and DOGE played a major role in freezing nearly all grant money at the NIH, including grants that could lead to a potential cure for cancer, Alzheimer's, and many other life-threatening diseases. So bottom line is that in my view, the real gentleman we should be having up here, and again no disrespect to you, sir, is Mr. Musk. And Mr. Chairman, I would hope very much, and I think the American people would be really very grateful, if we could bring the real leader of the NIH, Department of Education, many other agencies of government before us, and that is Mr. Musk. I will be looking forward to working with you to see if we can schedule a hearing with Mr. Musk. Thank you.

Before we turn to the nominee for his own opening statement, Dr. Bhattacharya will be introduced by Senator Pete Ricketts, who will make clear the connection between you and Nebraska, which I'm not quite sure what it is, but Senator Ricketts.

Well, thank you, Chairman Cassidy and Ranking Member Sanders, for holding this hearing. And to all the team members of the committee, it is an honor and a privilege to be able to introduce and recommend to you Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to be President Trump's nominee for the director of the National Institutes of Health. I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Bhattacharya during the COVID pandemic. A little bit about myself: I was governor of Nebraska at the time, but in a prior life I actually was a biology major undergrad and worked in a protein biochemistry lab. I'm actually published, you can go find it out there, so for a brief moment in time I was actually involved in the research world that the NIH gives out grants to help support. And during the COVID pandemic, obviously we didn't know a lot, there was no playbook, and so I was getting great advice from our folks at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, but I also reached out to talk to other folks like Dr. Bhattacharya about how we should handle this pandemic. One of the things about Dr. Bhattacharya is he showed great intellectual honesty and courage because he offered alternative suggestions about how to handle a pandemic. Now we know now that young people are not really impacted by the COVID virus as much as older people are, and typically in the past what we had done is we had a policy of let's protect the vulnerable people and let other people go about their life, and we really kind of turned that on its head for the COVID pandemic because we really didn't know what was going on. Dr. Bhattacharya helped give me a perspective and certainly demonstrated that he was thinking not just about how does the virus impact people, but if we do lockdowns and so forth, how will that impact people's health? And there were other impacts from doing those shutdowns. For example, we saw many school districts across the country shut down, and certainly in Nebraska as well. In March and April we made those recommendations as well, however in July I still with my Director of Education said we expect kids to be in classrooms in August, and that was important because kids need to be in classrooms. We found out during the pandemic one of the downsides of the pandemic is that kids learn better in the classrooms generally with their kids, and so one of the results of that, according to the 2022 Nation's Report Card, Nebraska scored highest in fourth grade math, and test scores in eighth grade math was second overall, and we did very well in reading as well because our kids were back in the classroom. And I saw states like California where they weren't in the classroom, and I just worry about the damage that did to those kids' education by not being in the classroom. Dr. Bhattacharya helped us think about broadly how are we going to look at everybody's health, not just about the virus but mental health, education. And in fact, Politico, I know you are all familiar with Politico, they ranked all 50 states on things like health outcomes, education, economy, and social well-being, and Nebraska ranked number one overall. We were the Politico ranked as the number one best pandemic response state. Because of our... this is why I was governor. This is why I was well, right, if there had been another guy governor I probably would have bragged about him too, but this is about when I was governor. But the point is, Dr. Bhattacharya, you know, he's been published in 135 different peer-reviewed publications on a variety of topics from law, medicine, economy, but having a broader perspective really helped us frame a pandemic response in Nebraska that helped us be very, very successful. And again, outside sources like Politico recognize that. So I think what you're going to get from Dr. Bhattacharya is somebody who understands the scientific method, that it's not all about hey we all agree on this, it's about we publish a research paper, it's out there for it to be replicated, other people are supposed to replicate that and see if they get the same results. If they don't, then the papers disagree, that's okay. I read a lot of research papers during the pandemic, guess what, a lot of them didn't agree. That's what science is about. It's not supposed to be about we all have a groupthink that this is the established way it is, it's about challenging ideas and about thinking, well you've got this idea, prove it, and then okay you've done this experiment, I'm going to replicate it, see if it actually comes out the way you said it did. That's the way research is supposed to work. This is what Dr. Bhattacharya in the real world demonstrated during the pandemic, that he had the courage to stand up and say wait a second, I know this is what the established way of thinking is, but I think there's an alternative way to look at it. And because he did that, because he had that courage, I can tell you specifically in Nebraska we benefited, and our school kids benefited by being in classrooms, our state benefited on a number of different areas that I just mentioned, whether it's health, social well-being, economy, education. We benefited. So I highly recommend to you Dr. Bhattacharya. I think he's great. He's used NIH grants in the past, so he gets how that program works. He'll be a great person to be able to make sure that we've got the right way that we're distributing those grants with transparency, accountability, and accomplishing what we want to accomplish, which is that basic research which is why we have the health system we do in this country today. So with that, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Thank you, Senator Ricketts. Thanks, Dr. Bhattacharya. You would like to give an opening statement? Please.

Thank you, sir. I'll start with questioning. One thing that's been a real topic has been the issue of measles vaccines and autism. We can see that the false article in The Lancet decades ago has led to a lot of people not getting their child vaccinated. There's now a child who died from a vaccine-preventable disease in Texas. Let me repeat that: a child who died from a vaccine-preventable disease in Texas. The Secretary has put out an editorial which, if you just read it, the kind of understanding of it is that you should get vaccinated. Now, I've been told that you have said that we need to invest in resources at looking at a possible link between measles vaccine and autism. I've not heard that directly, it's hearsay. Any comment?

But this has been fairly well, in fact exhaustively studied, and there's limited resources. If we keep plowing over ground that has been plowed over, knowing you can never prove a negative, and since we don't know the cause, we'll still have a problem. We've got a responsibility with limited resources. How do we address those things that we don't know the cause for that can ameliorate those things that are related to this crisis of chronic disease? My state, by the way, is terribly affected by chronic disease, so I'm totally with you on that. But what I want to make sure is there's an appropriate use. So again, just going back to, do you have an idea, an agenda that would once more prove that measles vaccine is not associated with autism, neither the schedule nor the vaccine or anything else associated with it? Because my concern is the more we pretend like this is an issue, the more we will have children dying from vaccine-preventable diseases.

But that's life. There are people who disagree that the world is round. That's true. And I say that not to minimize these concerns, but people still think Elvis is alive. So if you just say someone disagrees with me, therefore I'm going to put precious limited taxpayer dollars to this and not to addressing issues of obesity, heart disease, cancer, we've lost. There's an opportunity cost there. You're the economist, what am I doing talking about opportunity cost? So I'm pressing you on this because I think that kind of framework, if just because somebody is upset about something, do we have the opportunity cost of devoting resources at something which has already been pretty well examined?

But that good data already exists. You're a scientist, you accept that. It seems more an endorsement with an appropriate allocation of current dollars would be a better way to spend precious limited federal dollars.

Thank you, Senator Sanders.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Bhattacharya, as I mentioned a moment ago, in some cases we pay 10 times more for prescription drugs. The same drug that people in other countries pay, something like one out of four Americans can't afford the prescriptions that their doctors write when they get sick. Why do we pay the highest prices in the world by far for prescription drugs, and what would you do if you were confirmed as NIH director?

I don't mean to interrupt, but I don't have a lot of time. I hear what you're saying, and I'm not in disagreement with that. The question is, historically the NIH has spent billions of dollars in developing important drugs, and yet despite that taxpayer expenditure, we end up paying far more than other countries. Should a company that benefits from taxpayer dollar research at the NIH be able to charge any price that they want, or should we attach to those contracts a reasonable pricing clause that says, hey, if we help develop this drug and it's effective, you're going to have to charge a reasonable price for it?

Not quite true. I actually think what we're learning from the president is a lot can be done through executive orders. I would disagree with you. I think that's something that the NIH can do. Would you be open to that idea?

I'm hearing you, no. Okay, let me ask you this question. We talked about life expectancy, very important issue. Why is it that working-class people in America live seven years shorter lives than the rich?

Why does somebody who's working class end up with more chronic disease than somebody who's wealthy?

Okay, again, I apologize for interrupting, but what role does the food industry play? They sell a lot of crap to our children, and they spend zillions of dollars on advertising products that are really not healthy. What will you do about that?

But you're going to have, if you're confirmed, a bully pulpit, so to speak. Would you support what a number of countries around the world are doing, saying to the food industry they cannot do TV advertising for unhealthy foods?

I'm answering the question sounds like a good politician here. There are TV ads as we speak right now telling kids to tell their mothers that they desperately need some food which is really unhealthy. There are countries who say those ads should not be allowed on television targeted to kids. Would you support those of us who agree with that?

Not be willing, will you help lead that movement?

Thank you very much. Senator Paul.

Senator Sanders, I'm glad to see that you're interested in junk food. In fact, I have a great offer for you. Probably you could transform health more in our country by one policy change, and that would be removing junk food, sugar drinks, chips, Twinkies, Ding Dongs from food stamps. We have an epidemic of obesity, particularly among our poor, particularly among those on food stamps. Why not just take the food formulary and make it healthy food? We do this for WIC. We decided for pregnant women that we do. But I've had a bill out there for quite some time. I have no one from the other side of the aisle, so I'm glad to hear of your concern for junk food and hope I can get you to consider that. We talked about precious resources, and we say, well gosh, we can't study autism or any, you know, we're done with vaccines. The problem with that is there is a great deal of vaccine hesitancy, and there does need to be some commending. It doesn't mean we need 99% of the NIH budget on autism and vaccines, but certainly I think we have room to have another study to try to convince those who are hesitant. We got to look at populations of people who take no vaccines, the Amish and others, and try to compare them in a scientific way to those who do and see if we can learn something from that. But one way to have more precious resources directed towards good science is to get rid of the frivolous studies. William Proxmire started talking about this in the 70s. I've been talking about this for a dozen years. This is from the NIH: $2.1 million studying whether or not when you're at the lunch cafeteria and somebody in front of you sneezes on the food, are you more or less likely to take the food? I mean, that kind of stuff is ridiculous. You could have real science if you weren't doing that. But that's been going on for decades. One of the first things that Proxmire mentioned was a study on what makes people happy. That would be great for Cosmopolitan magazine, I really highly suggest it, but it's a stupid idea for taxpayer money for a study. But that was 30 years ago. One of the ones he hated the worst was what makes people more aggressive, gin or tequila? So they fed half the codfish gin and the other half tequila, and we all know it's got to be tequila, right? I mean, geez, come on, we don't need to study that. But the thing is, there's lots of frivolous stuff out there, and it gives good science a bad name. I vote for almost no spending up here because it's almost all inflated, but I have voted for money for the NIH, but they've got to do a better job. One of the things I hope is that you will direct it towards diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, these big diseases. But I don't think it's just good people. We got to change the way the grants are such that somebody on the grant committee maybe should be one from the major five diseases should be on every behavioral study to make sure we're not wasting it on, you know, whether rats that are lonely use more cocaine than well-liked rats use. I mean, that was from last year. So what do you think about trying to look at the way we do grants to try to populate the grant committees where there's attention being paid maybe to the big five diseases, so we don't get lost down a rat hole, so to speak? Would you have any thoughts on that?

You mentioned and you got cut off a little bit on steroids. This was a pretty amazing thing during COVID. Steroids are virtually pennies, they've been around forever. They found a 36% reduction in COVID deaths from people entering the ICU, they're either going on the ventilator, almost on the ventilator, there was like a huge death rate among these people, and they found something for pennies that was a cure. And yet when Dr. Fauci came to this committee in March of 2020, I asked him about using high-dose steroids the way they do for necrotizing fasciitis and other infections, and he said, 'Oh, they don't work, we've tried it,' and he was adamant that the steroids didn't work. And it turned out to be the best cure and the cheapest. And yet the knowledge didn't get out there because there was a bias. Do you think that we can change that kind of bias and have open debate, and that it'll make a difference with disease?

Thank you, Dr. Bhattacharya, for being here. I really appreciate it. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that right now President Trump and Elon Musk are really putting a lot of life-saving research at risk. We've had grant freezes, pauses on advisory meetings, pauses on clinical trials, mass firings being carried out by the so-called DOGE, and it is really threatening our ability to treat childhood cancer, to mitigate the effects of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, and to better understand and treat women's health issues. Do you support the recent researcher firings and grant freezes that have been implemented by Trump and DOGE?

So do you support further cuts at NIH funding or staff?

You know about all the grant freezes and the pauses on all the advisory committee meetings, all the pauses that are now in effect on clinical trials that are happening right now. So if you're confirmed, day one, what will you do about that?

Senator, absolutely. I'm going to be looking very carefully at the personnel decisions. I want the NIH to be staffed appropriately to meet the mission. I'm happy to work with you and other members of Congress to make sure that happens.

Okay. Well, just a few weeks ago, the Trump Administration announced an illegal plan to cap indirect cost rates at 15%. That amounts to a massive funding cut for research institutions large and small, red and blue states, everyone, and brings a lot of life-saving research to a screeching halt. Sick kids wouldn't get the treatment, clinical trials shut down. I want to ask you: do you know what the indirect cost rate was for Stanford, your own institution, last year?

So if the 15% cap was implemented, Stanford would lose approximately $160 million per year. So what do you say today to your colleagues at Stanford, researchers in my home state of Washington, scientists across the country? What do you say to the folks at Stanford about this?

I just have a few minutes left, and I wanted to ask you if you would implement the research committees again, the advisory councils, immediately upon day one.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Bhattacharya, welcome. I very much enjoyed our wide-ranging discussion in my office. I'm going to follow up on Senator Murray's question about indirect costs. As I indicated to you, I am strongly opposed to the administration's ill-conceived and completely arbitrary proposal to impose a 15% cap on indirect costs for NIH grants. Research labs and universities across the state of Maine have contacted me to describe the devastating impact that this cap would have on life-saving and life-enhancing biomedical research, on ongoing clinical trials, and on Maine's research-related jobs. In 2023, NIH supported 1,470 jobs in this field in the state of Maine alone. I think it's important that we all acknowledge that a one-size-fits-all approach makes absolutely no sense, and that is why NIH negotiates with the individual grant recipient what the indirect cost cap should be. It's legitimate to say that we should take another look at that: are we doing the right amount for Stanford versus Jackson Laboratories or the University of Maine? Those are legitimate questions. But to impose this arbitrary cap makes no sense at all. Furthermore, and I really want to stress this, this is against the law. Since 2017, we have had language in the Labor-HHS Appropriations bill that specifically prohibits the indirect cost formula from being changed, and yet that is what has been done without congressional intent or agreement or consent. The language has been carried every single year, including in the continuing resolution that we're now operating under. So I'm not surprised that a judge has stayed the order. So if confirmed, will you work immediately to rectify and reverse course on having a one-size-fits-all 15% cap on indirect costs?

Thank you. You testified that NIH should focus on research involving chronic diseases, and I agree that we should do a lot more in this area. Half of all American families report having Alzheimer's disease in their family, and their suffering from this progressive and ultimately fatal disease is tragic. But the impact is not just humanitarian; it also has a huge financial impact on our nation, and that cost burden is expected to reach a trillion dollars by 2050. For more than 12 years, Congress has supported a national strategic plan to look at ways for research to come up with the means of prevention, effective treatments, and ultimately a cure. I co-authored the original NAPA Act as we call it in 2011, and last year with my colleague Senator Warner led the reauthorization of the national plan through 2035. If you're confirmed, will you continue to support the national strategic plan targeting Alzheimer's?

Thank you. I want to begin by discussing the Trump administration's actions to halt thousands of NIH grants and billions of dollars in NIH research funding. Cancelled study sections and importantly advisory council meetings mean that NIH cannot award grants to fund critical medical research. Additionally, the administration attempted to illegally cap indirect costs. You've already gotten several questions about that. The indirect cost rates are in blatant defiance of appropriations law which prohibits NIH from capping these costs. I'm the ranking member of the Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee, and I've been raising the alarm about this for weeks now. On Monday, I revealed that the Trump Administration has halted $65 million in funding for Alzheimer's disease, stopping 14 Alzheimer's disease research centers from finding ways to treat and prevent this devastating disease. If NIH does not reverse course on these really disastrous decisions, the centers will run out of funding at the end of April. So Dr. Bhattacharya, do you agree with President Trump that NIH should stop funding for research on cancer and Alzheimer's disease?

Talk more about those researchers who've been fired. But right now, this administration has halted funding for 14 Alzheimer's disease research centers. Do you agree with that decision?

I know that you're not consulting with people at NIH pending your confirmation proceedings here, but you're not unaware that this is happening, and you should have a position on this. You've accepted President Trump's nomination, and you're watching these actions taking place in an organization that you may someday lead. Do you agree with the stripping away of funding for cancer and Alzheimer's disease?

So moving on, I'm concerned about how the administration's recent actions are putting especially early stage researchers at risk. We talked about that when you visited with me in my office in 2016. I worked with Senator Collins to enact the Next Generation Researchers Act, and since then NIH has increased funding for early stage investigators. But now these researchers are precisely the ones being targeted by the Trump Administration and Elon Musk in his unelected, unaccountable capacity. Due to the NIH funding freeze, university admissions for graduate students have slowed or even stopped. Postdoctoral fellows can't find jobs to launch their research careers. President Trump and Elon Musk have fired nearly 1,200 NIH employees so far, including hundreds of scientists conducting life-saving research. They put the rest of them on notice that more reductions in force are coming, and new restrictions from Trump and Musk could push out about 3,000 of the most promising early career researchers by refusing to renew their positions. This is the institute that you may be running. These actions threaten an entire generation of scientists, they threaten our future as a global leader in biomedical research, they threaten our future health and our ability to fight diseases, and frankly they threaten our national security. So Dr. Bhattacharya, you've said that as NIH director you want to increase support for the next generation of scientists. How will you repair the damage and support early career researchers? Could you please answer quickly because we're now sure just...

For the record, funding has not been canceled, the meeting to allocate it has been delayed. But just for the record.

Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I listened to the conversation today, I'm reminded that we all should doubt our own infallibility, and we should doubt the infallibility of the NIH as well. I'm flabbergasted as I listen to this conversation of people that really have never been involved in the scientific process and that they don't understand the infallibility. When I think of the NIH, the waste that has occurred, and I think of Alzheimer's, the waste is the path we went down since 2005, 2006. Dr. Bhattacharya, do you recall there's a study that really sent all the NIH funds in that direction for 20 years, and then we find out, oh my gosh, it was funded research? You remember that project?

Let's talk about chronic disease just for a second. The NIH has spent a disproportionate amount of money on research on diseases that impact a very small, minuscule amount of Americans. Meanwhile, 60% of Americans have a chronic disease. Speak a little bit about your vision of researching for figuring out the causes and treatments of chronic disease, specifically how food as medicine might be intertwined in your vision.

Are you committed to helping us figure out the causes of these chronic diseases?

Yeah, and a big part of that is the trust. Thanks to Dr. Fauci, no one trusts the NIH, the CDC anymore. We need a referee to come in and try to say, well, what is the latest science? Science is never settled, it's always changing. But what is it in ultra-processed food that's causing this uptick in chronic diseases? Speak a little bit about the indirect costs of these situations. Look, I think most of us understand that that's just another grift for universities, and we're paying their unfair share of overhead going forward. But what I'm concerned about is two-thirds of research dollars are funneled to four or five states. It looks like to me. I would just like your commitment for us flyover states to spread the love a little bit. It'll prevent inbreeding, and I hope that you do realize that not every good scientific idea comes from the coast.

Thank you, Senator Cassidy, and good morning, still we're in the morning. Welcome, congratulations on your nomination, doctor. I'm going to start out with a question I start all these hearings now with: if directed by the president to take action that would break the law, would you follow the law or would you follow the president's directive?

Well, that strains credulity given especially the last few weeks, and it's a disappointing answer. I will expect you to follow the law regardless of whether the president directs you to break it. Now let me go to the second question. President Trump has effectively frozen NIH funding for existing grants, including grants that directly treat people with rare diseases. My office has heard from Christine in Brentwood, New Hampshire, who is receiving treatment for colon cancer through an NIH-funded clinical trial, but now no longer knows the fate of her care because these freezes have delayed doctors who might be needing to hire new research assistants in the trial. This colon cancer trial may not have the research staff that they need to continue treating patients. If confirmed, will you commit to reversing the across-the-board funding freezes at NIH that have delayed life-saving clinical trials?

Well, the freeze is really delaying things, and it can have an impact as you know on treatment, especially treatments for something like cancer which can be very time-sensitive. That's the harm that these illegal freezes by this administration have really put into play here, and I hope you will speak up loudly and clearly and push back at the president and Mr. Musk on these freezes. These were appropriated funds. Article One of the Constitution and the law says that the administration is supposed to be spending those funds in accordance with the grants and the clinical trial plans. President Trump has not only effectively frozen NIH funding for existing clinical trials, he's also stopped review of new grant applications to help develop new cures for diseases such as pediatric cancer. Your written testimony focuses heavily on questioning past NIH research, but you don't lay out a plan for supporting research by our talented scientists across the country to help treat devastating diseases. You've talked about this with some of my colleagues, but if confirmed, will you immediately restart all NIH academic review committees and get all appropriated money out the door?

Okay, thank you. I'm going to forgo the other questions I was going to ask and just say this. For people watching this hearing, for parents who are worried about autism in particular, let me just say a couple of things. We see more cases of autism in this country than we used to for a number of reasons, part of which is we're much better at diagnosing it earlier and understanding what the spectrum of it is. We have ongoing science that is beginning to point, at the NIH among other places, to genetic issues that may play a part in the development of autism and environmental issues. The now-retracted study that suggested wrongly and fraudulently that autism might have a relationship to the MMR vaccine has been refuted by seven studies on every continent that involved hundreds of thousands of children. So for parents out there who may think that vaccines have something to do with autism, there is no scientific evidence that it does. And it disappoints me greatly that neither you nor the Secretary now of Health and Human Services are willing to say that declaratively and strongly, because what you do when you hesitate, what the Secretary does quite cynically in my view when he hesitates about this, is you churn and sow doubt and worry at a time when we should be focused on actually finding the cause and the cure of autism. And similarly, when we talk about the causes of chronic disease in our kids, there is plenty of evidence you've talked about. Working-class folks in America have worse health than richer people, and yet you are about to join an administration that is dedicated to giving more tax cuts to billionaires and taking away money and services from families that could help them live healthier, better lives and have children less subjected to things like hunger and housing insecurity which contribute to chronic illness. So I hope you will think about that. I am over my time, and I think Senator Tuberville is next.

Thank you, doctor, for being here. It's always good to run into somebody that's name is harder to say than mine and mispronounce more. You got a hard job in front of you, but I share the ideas and desire that the president has to root out waste and fraud that we have in this country, because if we don't, we're not going to have a country left. It's going to be gone. He's doing the right thing. You're going to have a tough job, you're going to have to put your team together and do the same thing. We have got to make sure we use the American taxpayers' money the right way. So kind of give me your plan of how you're going to do this when you come into office, when you are confirmed, how you going to put your team together?

Thank you. For the past four years I've been on this committee and we've gone through COVID devastating to our country. Transparency and trust have to be earned again. You said science has to be reliable, but people also have to trust you. We're finding bio labs in Ukraine and North Carolina. What's your plan to get trust back?