Claremont High School (CHS) has produced numerous successful alumni. However, none have risen to higher office than Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya, CHS Class of 1986. He was appointed on February 18 as the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by President Donald Trump. Bhattacharya, who is also the director of the National Institute of Health (NIH), will be serving in both roles concurrently.
Though he has a doctorate, he has never practiced medicine himself. Rather, he specializes in health economics, focusing on the allocation and distribution of healthcare resources. Bhattacharya was notably a controversial choice for both roles. In May of 2020, Bhattacharya wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal asserting that quarantining was not an effective method to combat the COVID-19 pandemic; hindsight shows this was not true. He is the co-author of an open letter called the Great Barrington Declaration, which claimed that America could avoid lockdowns and quarantines by letting the virus spread, leading to a “herd immunity.” Bhattacharya has expressed distaste for mask mandates and rejects suggestions to continue to vaccinate against COVID-19. This paper caught the attention of President Trump.
As NIH director, Bhattacharya has made his goals clear: to revoke grants from schools that do not align with conservative values and silence gender issues. He ordered the Trump administration’s gender dysphoria report, which called for eliminating gender-affirming care for young people. His report advocates for the pseudo-scientific practice of conversion therapy as treatment for transgender individuals, which goes starkly against medical consensus.
An anonymous CHS student who grew up with Bhattacharya explained what their personal experience was like with him.
“My experience with him has been really positive with him personally,” they said. “My family has been around him for a long time, and he gave me a lifelong interest in economics. For example, he taught me what supply and demand were when I was around 8. I think at heart he’s a good man.”
Bhattacharya has been involved with lots of controversial advocacy, which has affected many lives, including their own.
“His advocacy has caused me a lot of strife, especially concerning masks and vaccines,” they said. “My parents have been influenced against the values of masks by his work, and I feel responsible for possibly spreading disease because I am not allowed to wear masks. His support of Trump’s anti-trans agenda has made me and many of my friends afraid of possible violence and of a bleak future ahead.”
The role of the CDC is to protect public health by using health guidance and preventative measures to help protect the American public. With the knowledge of Jay Bhattacharya’s previous endeavors at the NIH, it will be important to keep an eye on the CDC’s actions in the following months to see whether they will bend to Trump’s cabinet or stay focused on the data.
