The Senate on Tuesday showed Dr. Monica M. Bertagnolli, a most cancers surgeon who these days leads the Nationwide Most cancers Institute, as the following director of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, overriding the objections of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate well being committee.

The vote used to be 62 to 36, with Mr. Sanders balloting no. In a observation ultimate month, he mentioned that whilst Dr. Bertagnolli used to be an “clever and worrying particular person,” he would vote in opposition to her as a result of she “has now not satisfied me that she is ready to take at the greed and gear of the drug corporations and well being care trade.”

Dr. Bertagnolli will turn into simplest the second one lady to steer the N.I.H. on an everlasting foundation, after Dr. Bernadine P. Healy, who served beneath President George H.W. Bush. She is going to take over an company that has been the objective of political assaults through Republicans, who’ve accused its scientists of deliberately downplaying the likelihood that Covid-19 used to be the results of a laboratory leak.

“I feel no person needs to understand what the real starting place of the ultimate Covid pandemic used to be greater than the biomedical analysis group,” Dr. Bertagnolli informed Senator Invoice Cassidy of Louisiana, the highest Republican at the well being committee, right through her affirmation listening to ultimate month.

“And how are you going to do so?” requested Mr. Cassidy, who’s a clinical physician. Dr. Bertagnolli promised she would make any knowledge at the matter “to be had, public and responsible to the American other people.”

President Biden introduced in Might that he would nominate Dr. Bertagnolli to steer the N.I.H., the sector’s premier clinical analysis company, which has an annual finances of greater than $47 billion and occupies a sprawling campus in Bethesda, Md. It’s been and not using a everlasting director since Dr. Francis S. Collins stepped down just about two years in the past.

However in an atypical twist, Mr. Sanders, an impartial who caucuses with the Democrats, held up Dr. Bertagnolli’s affirmation listening to for months to be able to prod Mr. Biden to take extra competitive motion to decrease drug costs.

The stalemate in spite of everything resulted in September, after the Division of Well being and Human Services and products introduced a $326 million contract with Regeneron to increase a brand new monoclonal antibody remedy for Covid-19. The deal stipulated that if the drug involves marketplace, its checklist value should be equivalent to or less than the fee in different main nations — a provision that triggered Mr. Sanders to announce he would time table a listening to for Dr. Bertagnolli.

The listening to went smartly for Dr. Bertagnolli, who grew up on a ranch in southwestern Wyoming and used to be offered to the committee through a Republican from that state, Senator John Barrasso. He lauded her as anyone who understands rural The us and mentioned he have been chatting up her neighbors.

“They talk of her grit, her staying power and her choice,” Mr. Barrasso, who’s a clinical physician, mentioned, including, “Her dedication to the land and the cattle speaks volumes about her personality and her braveness.”

Dr. Bertagnolli may be a most cancers affected person. She introduced past due ultimate yr that she have been identified with breast most cancers. She informed the committee that she had finished her remedy and that her diagnosis “is superb.”

“I additionally had get admission to to remarkable care, understanding complete smartly that now not each affected person has that very same likelihood,” she mentioned. “Most significantly, each remedy I won used to be supported through N.I.H.-funded analysis.”