Steve Bannon and Jay Bhattacharya — image from Important context
I would like to draw attention to the exceptional writing and dedicated pro-science activism of Dr. Angie Rasmussen and Dr. Jeremy Berg.
1. Dr. Rasmussen is a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan who has been opposing the dangerous covid misinformation of Jay Bhattacharya since 2020. It is a travesty of American science that Bhattacharya was installed as the Trumpist bureaucrat tasked with destroying the NIH, the world’s premier funder of biomedical research.
Her latest masterpiece of demolition compares Bhattacharya to the Soviet swindler (and Stalin favourite) Trofim Lysenko, who denied the genetic transmission of traits, persecuted his enemies and killed seven million people in a famine that he did.
I encourage you to read Dr. Rasmussen’s entire article. Some highlights are below.
Bhattacharya is the new Lysenko
Starve NIH through ineptitude, bitterness and thirst for revenge
DR. ANGELA RASMUSSEN
…
Both (Lysenko and Bhattacharya) have exploited population-level disasters to climb out of academic obscurity and into positions of power. Both did so by promoting authoritarian political interests and telling a dictator what he wanted to hear. Both proposed and doubled down on policies that would kill millions of people, even resorting to manipulating or fabricating data to justify them. Both were so emotionally fragile and unable to tolerate expert criticism that they pursued deadly vendettas against entire scientific disciplines. The only difference is that Lysenko hated genetics, while Bhattacharya hates public health, virology and vaccines.
Bhattacharya first came to prominence with the Santa Clara serology study in April 2020, a widely circulated preprint that argued that the mortality rate from COVID-19 was much lower than most other estimates. It was later revealed that this study was partially funded by the CEO of JetBlue Airlines, who was looking for data to support the lifting of pandemic restrictions on air travel. A few months later, Bhattacharya dropped the Great Barrington Declaration, a pandemic policy proposal that calls for “vulnerable” people to be isolated forever, while encouraging a COVID-free-for-everywhere else. It would have resulted in mass infection and an additional one million deaths in the United States if it had been implemented.
How much does Bhattacharya hate vaccines?
Bhattacharya began lying about vaccines in 2021. That’s when he appeared on a panel hosted by “vaccine safety” fanatic Steve Kirsch and his Great Barrington Statement co-author Martin Kulldorff, the anti-vax barrow wight who currently heads the ACIP, is clearing it of expertise and trying to cancel the MMRV vaccine. At this panel, Bhattacharya and Kulldorff sat quietly and nodded tacit approval when Kirsch falsely claimed that COVID vaccines killed more than half a million people.
Her inevitable conclusion:
“Bhattacharya is the American Lysenko and must be removed as NIH director.”
We know that Bhattacharya is currently in control of US biomedical research, eagerly trashes research that doesn’t align with his own mass death-causing lunacy for Trump, and really wants revenge on anyone who ever pointed out that the Great Barrington Declaration would kill millions, the evidence doesn’t show that the pandemic started with a lab leak, and that it is an essential pandemic leak, and that RNA is essential to effective vaccine technology. We know how this story will end. We must have the courage as a scientific community to stand united against it.
What can we do as researchers? Be as loud as possible and amplify messages like these!
Support the American public and HHS employees — read and sign the letter.
2. Dr. Berg is former editor-in-chief of Science and the former director of NIGMS. He has embarked on a high-profile email campaign calling out Bhattacharya’s hypocrisy and incompetence as NIH director, as well as the catastrophic, politically motivated decline in grants. Dr. Berg has documented these communications on Bluesky.
Among my favorites are:
I have followed NIH’s progress and guidelines closely throughout the year. When Director Bhattacharya began making public statements of various kinds that exposed his lack of knowledge about NIH, I began sending emails in good faith to share my knowledge of NIH programs with him to help him do his important job more effectively. At first he did not respond at all, and when he did, he responded by using the term “ideological boondoggles” without definition. This misbehavior diminished my hopes for his interest in receiving input on NIH programs and policies, as he appeared to have entrenched policy perspectives.
I’m a fan of the Governor Newsom Press Office account on X, which mocks Trump’s incoherent ALL CAPS ramblings. Likewise, I support the ridicule of inept and unqualified Trumpist bureaucrats on social media and elsewhere.
