Exclusive: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on How the NIH Is Rethinking Autism, DEI, China Ties, and Gain-of-Function
American Thought Leaders
The Epoch Times
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2026
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this no-holds-barred interview, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, breaks down how the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research is changing under his leadership.
Bhattacharya, a former professor of Stanford University, public health expert, and coauthor of the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration, was sworn in as director of the NIH in April last year.
With an annual budget of almost $50 billion, the NIH sets the direction of research at universities, medical centers, and research institutes across America.
It encompasses 27 institutes and centers that cover different areas of health and employ some 20,000 people. One of those is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci for nearly 40 years.
The NIH, Bhattacharya told me, “really hasn’t had a change in leadership in decades. ... We’ve had new directors, but the fundamental structure and direction of the NIH has been basically the same until last year.”
Bhattacharya says his top priority is to end the practice of “funding the scientific enterprise for the sake of funding science” and ensure that NIH-funded scientific research actually produces better health outcomes for the American people. The goal should be improvements in health and longevity, not just more scientific papers, he says.
During our interview, we covered a lot of ground, including:
-Has the NIH completely stopped funding gain-of-function research?
-Is the NIH continuing to fund research with China?
-How has funding for international research institutes been restructured?
-Has the NIH stopped funding all research grants related to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives?
-What is being done to reverse the politicization of science?
-What is the NIH doing to help those who suffered injuries from the mandated COVID-19 mRNA vaccines?
-What can the NIH do to alleviate the massive replication crisis in research?
-How does he view the controversy surrounding vaccines and autism? Is the NIH looking into potential links?
-How is the NIH restructuring the allocation of funding?
What America needs, Bhattacharya told me, is a “second scientific revolution,” saying: “The NIH has the capacity to induce that second scientific revolution. That’s what I’m going to work toward for the next few years.”
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The U.S. invested in the Chinese biomedical research enterprise. |
| 0:05.0 | Almost every single top Chinese biomedical research scientists of note |
| 0:10.0 | was funded in some part by the NIH. |
| 0:12.0 | Many were trained in the United States. |
| 0:14.0 | In this no-holds-barred interview with Dr. J. Badacharya, |
| 0:17.0 | director of the National Institutes of Health, NIH, He answers questions about U.S.-China Research Partnerships, Gain a Function Research, COVID-19 vaccine injuries, and DEI. |
| 0:29.6 | The ticket to getting sort of extra, relatively easy funds was to promise to do DEI research. |
| 0:34.6 | We also dive into controversies surrounding vaccines and autism. |
| 0:38.3 | It's become a taboo thing to do, but it really should just be a research agenda. |
| 0:41.3 | Here's how he's changing the world's largest public funder of biomedical research. |
| 0:46.3 | You're funding 10,000 new research projects a year. |
| 0:50.3 | Wow. |
| 0:51.3 | If you fund a 50 projects and 49 of them fail in the 50th Cures Type 2 |
| 0:56.1 | diabetes, that's a successful portfolio. If every single project succeeds and all you get |
| 1:01.6 | is a thousand papers published, I don't care. I don't want that. This is American Thought |
| 1:06.5 | Leaders and I'm Yanya Kelluk. Dr. J. Badacharya, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. |
| 1:16.6 | Nice to be here, Jan. |
| 1:18.6 | Thank you for taking the time to sit down for an interview where we kind of both agreed no questions would be off the table. |
| 1:26.6 | There's a lot of thoughts out there |
| 1:29.0 | about what's happening at the NIH, what's doing well, what's going poorly. I wanted to kind of |
| 1:34.2 | go through the roster and try to understand. Let's start here. How has the NIH changed? |
| 1:40.6 | What have been the big positive changes at NIH this year? Well, you know, the NIH |
... |
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