In early 2022, Stanford medical pupil Santiago Sanchez got down to manage a campus debate with Jay Bhattacharya — a professor on the college whose outspoken denunciations of pandemic lockdowns made him a right-wing icon and a lightning rod each inside and outdoors the college.
But when Sanchez pitched the concept to Stanford college, the response was tepid. University lecturers he approached warned that debating Bhattacharya would elevate his views quite than problem him. The prevailing sentiment, Sanchez mentioned, was that Bhattacharya’s quarter-hour would ultimately subside together with the coronavirus.
Three years later, Bhattacharya’s once-marginal platform has ascended to the highest of American public health policy. He now leads the National Institutes of Health, overseeing an overhaul of practically $40 billion in federal analysis grants — together with cash as soon as destined for Stanford.
Bhattacharya’s rise is a component of a broader Stanford imprint on the Trump administration’s health agenda. From inside and outdoors the federal government, the distinguished West Coast college’s alums are actually serving to to form seismic reorientation of public health — one which has alarmed many within the medical institution.
In all, greater than a dozen individuals with Stanford ties have turn into distinguished figures within the Make America Healthy Again motion, galvanizing health-conscious Americans who really feel extra harmed than helped by trendy drugs.
“It’s not a coincidence that a lot of the people questioning the existing establishment came from Stanford,” mentioned Calley Means, a Stanford alumnus and health entrepreneur who has suggested Trump. “There’s a culture of questioning existing assumptions.”
At Stanford, MAHA’s ties have been trigger for each celebration and unease.
In official statements, the college congratulated Bhattacharya’s appointment and mentioned it was “proud” Trump chosen one of its alumnae, best-selling wellness creator Casey Means, for Surgeon General. (Casey and Calley Means are siblings.)
Among rank-and-file college and college students, although, there’s dismay over the growing relationship between Stanford and a authorities that questions vaccine security, promotes fringe theories about autism and pushes unproven remedies.
Philip Pizzo, who spent a decade as dean of the Stanford School of Medicine, instructed NCS that the blurring of traces between educational analysis and partisan politics had turn into “problematic,” and makes it tough for the general public to know who to belief.
“Obviously, this becomes much more complicated when extreme polarization abounds,” he added.
In a press release to NCS, the Stanford School of Medicine mentioned it “recognizes the vital role of public service in advancing our nation’s health and well-being.”
“Our academic community brings a breadth of expertise and perspectives to this work, with a long record of contributing to our nation’s government and civic discourse – including service across multiple U.S. administrations,” the assertion mentioned.
Long prized as a cradle of scientific innovation and Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, the college has served as a breeding floor for contrarian thinkers who’ve questioned orthodoxy on the street to innovation. Its alumni embody trendy tech titans like Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Netflix’s Reed Hastings and Intel’s Pat Gelsinger in addition to the founders of iconic American firms like Hewlett Packard and Charles Schwab.
“The culture at Stanford was always receptive to thinking out of the box, for taking new directions, for being willing to fail, and for seeking new ways to think about issues,” mentioned Pizzo, who discovered the spirit of Palo Alto “striking” when he arrived in 2021 in comparison with the hierarchical Ivy League colleges he left behind.
Few would mistake the Bay-area college as a hotbed of Republican politics, however a conservative streak has future via it. The Hoover Institution, a GOP-aligned policy assume tank presently led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, sits at its coronary heart. Silicon Valley’s libertarian currents are mirrored within the Stanford Review, a right-of-center pupil paper based by tech billionaire Peter Thiel when he was a pupil there practically 4 many years in the past.
The pandemic, although, uncovered a deeper rift on campus. Scott Atlas, a longtime Stanford college member, emerged as an architect of President Donald Trump’s extra contentious coronavirus strikes. Atlas criticized masks mandates, shutdown measures and faculty closures and advocated for permitting the lethal virus to unfold via more healthy populations to construct “herd immunity.”
In response, the school senate censured him, and a bunch of 98 Stanford physicians and scientists printed an open letter rebuking what they referred to as Atlas’ “falsehoods and misrepresentations in science.”
But Atlas additionally had assist on campus. As the pandemic continued in late 2020, Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter opposing sure Covid-19 mitigations that drew appreciable scrutiny from different docs and scientists. Yet Stanford had extra signees than every other faculty.
Voices inside and outdoors Stanford have accused the college of failing to problem contrarian — some argue harmful — public health opinions amplified by these with Stanford on their resumes
“You have some bad actors that act unaccountably, and people are asleep at the wheel, and now they run the country,” mentioned Sanchez, who stays a medical pupil.
At instances, the statements from Atlas and Bhattacharya contradicted analysis coming from the college’s different scientists and college students, mentioned Mallory Harris, who has studied the proliferation of vaccine skepticism and obtained a doctorate diploma in Biology at Stanford. Harris referred to as it “extremely demoralizing” that the college didn’t extra vocally assist that work.
“It was always kind of framed as, ‘the university can’t weigh in because then we would be taking a side and we need to let this to be a scientific debate,’” mentioned Harris, now on the University of Maryland. “But a lot of the time the attacks weren’t scientific.”
Renée DiResta, a former researcher on the Stanford Internet Observatory, mentioned she skilled this firsthand. The Observatory was a middle that tracked abuses on-line, however DiResta’s work grew to become subjected to accusations from Bhattacharya and others that she was serving to the federal government censor conservatives. Bhattacharya took his complaints about censorship all the best way to the US Supreme Court and misplaced. But DiResta mentioned she was nonetheless discouraged by the college from responding to his assaults.
“I’m supposed to just allow my colleague two buildings down to defame us on Fox News?” she requested.
Atlas declined to be interviewed for this story. A spokesperson for the NIH mentioned Bhattacharya was not out there to talk to NCS as a result of authorities shutdown.
In mid-2024, Stanford dismantled the Internet Observatory. A couple of months later, the college hosted a pandemic summit organized by Bhattacharya to relitigate the general public health steps taking throughout the pandemic. The occasion, which featured many outspoken opponents of Covid mitigation methods, drew sharp condemnation – however not from the college’s administration.
Addressing the convention, newly put in Stanford president Jonathan Levin spoke out towards the critics and supplied a glimpse into his method for navigating the divisions rising from his campus.
“In today’s world, we absolutely need to ask and expect our students to be able to engage with, listen to, and debate with people with whom they disagree,” Levin mentioned. “My view is that we need to err on the side of talking to one another.”
Stanford, MAHA and Trump 2.0
Casey Means mentioned it’s becoming that Stanford is well-represented in an more and more highly effective wave of anti-establishment voices.
“The country is having a necessary, messy conversation about how our elite institutions have led us into the wrong direction,” Means mentioned, “and Stanford is both an elite institution and an institution that preaches independent thinking and iconoclastic thinking.”
Besides Bhattacharya and the Means siblings, the Palo Alto-to-Washington pipeline additionally contains Arman Sharma, a former Stanford researcher who as soon as co-authored a textbook with Bhattacharya, and now advises the Department of Health and Human Services. Bruce Patterson, the previous director of virology at Stanford, just lately appeared at a White House roundtable on lengthy Covid alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the driving pressure of Trump’s MAHA makeover. And George Tidmarsh, a Stanford professor, was overseeing drug critiques on the Food and Drug Administration earlier than abruptly resigning his put up this month.
The college’s affect on public health extends to outdoors the administration. Atlas and one other long-time Stanford college member, John Ioannidis, now sit on the editorial board of a brand new different health journal Bhattacharya launched in February.
Some of the nation’s main vaccine skeptics are linked to Stanford as nicely, together with Kennedy’s former working mate Nicole Shanahan; Simone Gold, the founder of the perimeter medical group America’s Frontline Doctors; and Mary Talley Bowden, a sleep physician who launched Americans for Health Freedom to foyer towards coronavirus vaccines.
And then there’s neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, a tenured professor whose wellness podcast “Huberman Lab” has made him one of Stanford’s most recognizable figures. His viewers spans the ideological spectrum, as do his company (he has interviewed each Vivek Murthy, the surgeon common below President Joe Biden, and Means earlier than she was Trump’s choose for a similar job). But he has gained a very devoted following inside the so-called red-pilled manosphere, the net world of bro influencers and their followers who proved key to Trump’s victory final fall.
Huberman has appeared on reveals fashionable inside this demographic, just like the Joe Rogan Experience and comic Theo Von’s This Past Weekend. He instructed NCS he couldn’t find time for an interview.
Stanford hasn’t essentially benefited from its rising clout. The college was amongst many hit by mass federal funding cuts this spring to medical analysis seen as selling range, fairness, and inclusion, with not less than 16 grants terminated. Dozens of Stanford researchers utilized this summer time for NIH funding to review the causes of autism, however the college was not among the many 10 universities chosen for the funding.
This yr, college management introduced a $140 million funding lower, citing “significant budget consequences from federal policy changes” together with scaled-back analysis funding. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bhattacharya, at instances a critic of his former employer and erstwhile colleagues, thought of linking NIH funding to free-speech scores, the place Stanford ranks close to the underside.
On campus, difficult concepts favored by the surging contrarian wing of Stanford thinkers is now seen as harmful – a seeming reversal of a scenario conservatives as soon as loudly complained about.
“There’s a real cost to being outspoken in the current environment,” mentioned Jake Scott, a doctor and infectious illness specialist at Stanford Medicine.
Scott as soon as questioned sure Covid insurance policies akin to prolonged lockdowns (Bhattacharya as soon as adopted him on X; he now not does). But he has additionally obtained hate mail and loss of life threats for defending vaccines amid MAHA’s rise.
“Many of my colleagues have concerns about backlash and about being misrepresented. I certainly have concerns about the professional risks of taking public positions, especially these days,” he mentioned. That’s led to hesitation amongst college to disagree publicly with main MAHA voices, he mentioned.
Others have welcomed the talk. Huberman credited Bhattacharya for taking part in “an essential role in shining a light on certain aspects of public health” throughout a four-hour interview with the brand new NIH director on his present.
“Love or hate MAHA,” he wrote on social media in February, “all Americans are far more proactive in thinking about what they will and won’t do for their own health than ever before.”