OPINION:
Democrats have been claiming for years that Republicans, and specifically President-elect Donald Trump, are anti-science. That narrative is about as accurate as President Biden’s declaration, “You’re not going to get COVID-19 if you have these vaccinations.”
The nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health is vindication for the respected Stanford professor, but more importantly, for the cause of protecting the substantive dialogue that is central to medical and scientific research. It was this dialogue that was systematically and nefariously destroyed by the nation’s public health complex during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Trump’s inspired choice of Dr. Bhattacharya could be among the most consequential of the appointments that promise to disrupt Washington’s unbridled bureaucracy and restore public confidence in government.
Democrats want Americans to forget that for all their talk about protecting bodily autonomy when it comes to abortion, they championed throwing the Constitution out the window as the pandemic took hold. We have such short memories with the frenetic pace of today’s information society. But we can’t move on from the fact that the government, Big Tech and the mainstream media conspired to intimidate, coerce, blacklist and malign not just Dr. Bhattacharya but any American that dared to counter the state’s narrative.
It was the definition of fascism.
In the years since, much to the chagrin of the left-wing media, Dr. Bhattacharya has been proved correct about his concerns regarding the damaging impact of lockdowns, the efficacy of COVID shots, the need for mandatory masking, the phony science behind social distancing and other misinformation driven by Dr. Anthony Fauci and his ilk.
Dr. Bhattacharya starkly contrasts with the repulsiveness of Dr. Fauci’s “I am science” admonition to the world.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the government was turned against Americans using manipulated science and false consensus as a pretext for shredding the Constitution. Misinformation driven by Washington’s protected expert class attacked not only individual citizens but also the scientific method and culture that undergird the scientific community.
The Great Barrington Declaration, organized by Dr. Bhattacharya and others, shouldn’t have been necessary. But in a time when progressives want people to believe that truth is subjective, those researchers and physicians had to take a stand to protect the integrity of science itself.
Those who signed the Great Barrington Declaration were among the first to demonstrate real courage in the face of the government coercion few Americans ever thought possible. Others fortunately dared to follow.
Our courts are now showing signs of similar resolve, more consistently providing opportunities for restitution for those openly intimidated, violated and scorned for their professional and religious beliefs.
A federal jury recently awarded $12.69 million to a former information technology employee of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan after finding that the company refused her religious accommodation request to be exempted from the vaccination mandate.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that the Los Angeles Unified School District violated the rights of its employees by enforcing COVID-19 mandates. The court even had the courage to acknowledge that the vaccine doesn’t prevent infection or transmission and that the government failed to demonstrate that such a violation of rights wouldn’t happen.
While health care professionals wrongfully fired in New York are still awaiting word from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as to whether they will get their day in court, state courts there have also repeatedly restored wrongfully fired workers with back pay.
In 2022, Chicago-based NorthShore University HealthSystem was the first to agree to compensate hundreds of current and former workers for violating their religious liberties. There are more cases and victories now than defeats for whom the government’s abuses proved far worse than the virus.
Now, Dr. Bhattacharya can help Mr. Trump restore confidence in the NIH. Those reforms must include getting control of the shadowy process of awarding grants, ending the revolving door of Big Pharma and the NIH, instituting term limits for the heads of agencies to spur greater innovation and curtailing the practice of government researchers profiting from private sources.
He can also push for greater transparency and ensure the release of more agency data on the COVID-19 pandemic, which can help prevent politicized science from eviscerating Americans’ rights again.
These initiatives and more will help rebuild the credibility of our nation’s public health complex and, more importantly, safeguard the policymaking process from government censors, political agendas and corporate meddlers.
The economic, physical and psychological damage done by the government to Americans who were not at high risk from COVID-19 was the greatest injustice ever perpetrated by Washington against the people of this nation.
Dr. Bhattacharya’s appointment isn’t just vindication for him. It is a victory for all dissenting physicians who risked their licenses to stand against deep-state medicine. It helps ensure that when this country faces another public health crisis, science will be protected from politics, profits and power grabs.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV and a columnist with The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.