Yet another "Only the best" appointment from our Liar in Chief--
NIH Institute Director Abruptly Replaced
— New NIEHS chief is a friend of Vice President JD Vance
By Kristina Fiore
October 24, 2025 • 3 min read
Kristina Fiore leads MedPage’s enterprise & investigative reporting team. She’s been a medical journalist for more than a decade and her work has been recognized by Barlett & Steele, AHCJ, SABEW, and others. Send story tips to k.fiore@medpagetoday.com.
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Researchers are raising concerns that an institute director at the NIH was abruptly replaced with a friend of Vice President JD Vance.
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, sent an email to staff late last Friday announcing that Kyle Walsh, PhD, a neuroepidemiologist, became director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) the Friday prior, ScienceInsider reported.
NIH employees active on social media noted that Walsh was not selected through the standard process for filling a vacant position -- and they're worried that the move opens the door to more political appointments at the agency.
"Putting JD Vance's friend as an institute director, breaking the normal process for selecting scientific talent, this is really bad," Mark Histed, PhD, chief of a lab on neural computation and behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), said in a post on Instagram.
"Institute directors are chosen by other scientists for their leadership and their scientific skills," Histed said. "They have always been hired by convening a search committee of leading scientists that come from inside and outside NIH."
That didn't happen in this case, he noted. "Shifting institute directors from being chosen by top scientists to being chosen exclusively by the White House, making them political appointees, would be a huge disaster."
Walsh indeed has scientific credentials. He is an associate professor at Duke University School of Medicine, and has received grants from at least two NIH institutes and the Department of Defense, according to his university profile page.
However, Jenna Norton, PhD, MPH, a program director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, noted in an Instagram post that Walsh is "underqualified for the typical candidate you would look at for an NIH director-level position."
"He's an associate professor with no experience administering a huge program ... like NIEHS," which has a $900 million budget, she said.
What Walsh does have is a very public and close connection with Vance. In his profile page on the Sontag Foundation website, Walsh noted that Vance "officiated my wedding" in 2012, and lived with him and his wife in San Francisco "for a few months" in 2015.
Both Vance and Walsh graduated from the Ohio State University, and attended Yale University around the same time -- Vance for law school and Walsh for a PhD in epidemiology.
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Walsh replaced Richard Woychik, PhD, who has helmed NIEHS since 2020 and recently was renewed for a second 5-year term with the support of Bhattacharya, ScienceInsider reported. He will be taking a senior position in Bhattacharya's office focusing on the NIH's "Make America Healthy Again" agenda.
NIEHS, which is not far from the Duke campus in North Carolina, ran into controversy earlier this year when a journal that relied on its support paused publication as federal cuts led to uncertainty about its future. Environmental Health Perspectives has not published new research since June, according to its website.
That's not the only instance of the Trump administration meddling with government-supported journals. The CDC's flagship publication, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, skipped publishing for the first time in its more than 60-year history due to a federal communications pause in January, and has experienced an overall slowdown in publication.
Given the evidence of political interference, researchers are concerned that there will only be more of it in the future. Currently, 13 of 27 NIH institutes and centers don't have a permanent director, and official searches are only underway at two: the NIMH and the NIH Clinical Center, according to ScienceInsider.
Last month, at least four scientists on the NIMH search committee were dismissed, only to be reinstated after public outcry.
Only the NIH director and the National Cancer Institute director are supposed to be politically appointed positions.
Histed pointed out that the administration might be testing the waters. "They first try to move in the place that will produce the least pushback," he said. "Then if it works, they expand."
He noted that the NIEHS director was replaced late on a Friday.
"Since there's been almost no pushback," Histed said, "now this sets them up to do the same thing, to fire and replace with politicals, with Trump friends and cronies, other institute directors in the future." |
