"I sued the Biden administration for COVID censorship": Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
The Stanford prof and Great Barrington Declaration coauthor explains the high stakes of Murthy v. Missouri, the politicization of medical research, and his RFK Jr. endorsement.
For the latest episode of The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie, I spoke with Jay Bhattacharya, a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration and one of the plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri, the Supreme Court case charging that the Biden administration and other parts of the federal government illegally colluded "with social media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content."
A decision in that case is imminent, and a victory for Bhattacharya's side would make it impossible for the government to pressure X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and other platforms to ban or squelch legal speech.
A professor of medicine at Stanford University and a Ph.D. economist, Bhattacharya talks about his experience being blacklisted online because of his criticisms of lockdowns and other COVID policies, the ways in which both Donald Trump and Joe Biden fumbled their responses to the pandemic, and what the public health establishment must do to regain the trust and confidence of the American public. (I spoke with him about all that back in 2022; watch that here.)
I agree with Jay about a lot of things, especially the centrality of free speech not just to a flourishing scientific community but a flourishing society too. Yet I remain puzzled by the warmth of his feelings for figures such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is a true anti-vaxxer (watch the 90-minute interview my Reason colleague Zach Weissmueller and I did with him last June).
My favorite part of this Q&A comes toward the end, when I ask Jay about how the public health establishment can earn the trust and confidence of Americans again. Here’s a snippet from that segment, where he goes deep on personal autonomy.
Nick Gillespie: As a naturalized citizen of America, do you think that Americans are able to make health choices for themselves? Because part of the Noble Lie—and there's a right wing version of this and a left wing version—is like, ‘Come on, you people out there, you just you you can't handle the truth.’ Do you think that's fundamentally wrong?
Jay Bhattacharya: I think that's fundamentally wrong. I think that health is a human right in the sense of, I should fundamentally be able to decide just for myself what decisions, what things I do with my body. If I believe in patient autonomy [and] informed consent, I think those are fundamental ethical principles that I think serve medicine. If you have a public-health establishment] that is paternalistic, that says, look, I know what's good for you…How has that worked out? If I’m using [my authority] to change who you are…the trade-offs you make, then I'm doing you an injustice. I can tell you that smoking is bad for you, that it causes lung cancer. And then you still go smoke a cigar because you're hanging out with your friends and you enjoy it. And it makes makes your life better for that moment. Who am I to tell you not to do it, right? My job is to tell you that smoking…has these health consequences, to reflect the medical literature as best I can, as honestly as I can, and help you make the best choices for yourself.
Here’s some chapter headings for the video and podcast versions. Down below you’ll find a YouTube embed and Spotify and Apple links.
Go here to watch/listen to this at Reason.com.
00:00— Introduction
01:12— Murthy vs. Missouri
17:05— Politicization of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
20:45— Loss of trust in public health
25:45— Biden vs. Trump on COVID
27:49— What Bhattacharya got wrong
29:35— COVID-19 vaccines mistakes
34:53— RFK Jr. and other vaccine skeptics
39:44— What would Bhattacharya revise?
42:17— How Bhattacharya's politics changed
44:20— How do we restore trust in public health?