The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Dr. Monica M. Bertagnolli, a cancer surgeon who currently leads the National Cancer Institute, as the next director of the National Institutes of Health, overriding the objections of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate health committee.
The vote was 62 to 36, with Mr. Sanders voting no.
on a permanent basis, after Dr. Bernadine P. Healy, who served under President George H.W.
She will take over an agency that has been the target of political attacks by Republicans, who have accused its scientists of intentionally downplaying the possibility that Covid-19 was the result of a laboratory leak.
“I think no one wants to know what the true origin of the last Covid pandemic was more than the biomedical research community,” Dr. Bertagnolli told Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the top Republican on the health committee, during her confirmation hearing last month.
Persons:
Monica M, Bernie Sanders of, Sanders, Bertagnolli, “, Dr, Bernadine, Healy, George H.W, George H.W . Bush, ”, Bill Cassidy of
Organizations:
National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Republican
Locations:
Bernie Sanders of Vermont, George H.W ., Bill Cassidy of Louisiana