MIT Students for Open Inquiry is pleased to present Stanford University professor and pubic health expert Jay Bhattacharya for a discussion of government efforts to curb dissenting opinions on matters of medicine and public health, and the collateral effects such efforts have on society. Professor Bhattacharya's own experiences with such censorship efforts give him a unique authority on the dangers of such government overreach, and how it can be effectively countered. 

The MIT Free Speech Alliance is pleased to provide additional support to make this event possible. this event is free and open to the public, and will be held in MIT's Schwarzman College of Computing, room 45-230. The event takes place Thursday, April 4, from 5:00-6:30 p.m.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY
 
Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine in the Department of Health Policy (formerly in the Department of Medicine) and a fellow at Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom. He directs the Center for Economics and Demography of Health and Aging at Stanford University. Dr. Bhattacharya’s research currently focuses on the epidemiology of COVID-19, including the lethality of COVID-19 infection and effects of lockdown policies. He is the coauthor of the Great Barrington Declaration, which outlines a return to traditional public health principles for managing pandemics. This approach features focused protection for shielding vulnerable populations, while eschewing harmful lockdowns that cause enormous collateral public health harms.
 

Before COVID-19, Dr. Bhattacharya studied the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with an emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and health policy. His work on science policy features the development of a new algorithm to measure the novelty of published papers within biomedical science.

Over his career, Dr. Bhattacharya has published over 150 articles in top peer-reviewed scientific journals in medicine, economics, health policy, epidemiology, statistics, law, and public health, infectious disease epidemiology, and pediatrics, among other fields. Dr. Bhattacharya is the author of a top-selling textbook, “Health Economics,” which is used to teach undergraduate and graduate students worldwide. For decades, he has served as a grant reviewer for the National Institute on Health and as a contributing editor for scientific journals, including (currently) the Journal of Human Capital. He holds an M.D. and Ph.D. in economics, both earned at Stanford University.