Jayanta Bhattacharya’s confirmation hearing to lead the National Institutes of Health before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions began with a pointed line of questioning from none other than committee chair Sen. Bill Cassidy.
Cassidy asked Bhattacharya outright if he would invest NIH resources to investigate the debunked link between autism and vaccines. Bhattacharya said that he personally does not believe that there is a link, but he would not fully rule out the possibility of looking into the theory because “there are people who might disagree with me.”
“That’s life,” said Cassidy. “There’s people who disagree that the world is round.”