The MIT professor of management, who already sits on the CDC’s revamped immunization advisory committee, is a known skeptic of vaccines, particularly mRNA technology.
The CDC has appointed established vaccine critic Retsef Levi to lead a COVID-19 committee tasked with reviewing vaccine safety and efficacy data.
According to reporting on Monday from Reuters, which confirmed the appointment with a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, Levi will take charge of this COVID-19 immunization working group. This news adds to the updated terms of reference published by the CDC on Aug. 20, which stated that agency staffers will not be part of this committee.
The COVID-19 immunization workgroup will function as a subgroup of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), as per the agency’s document. The subcommittee will primarily serve “to review relevant published and unpublished data, and clinical and scientific knowledge” and come up with “options” that it will then present to ACIP during public meetings to help the advisory panel craft vaccination recommendations. Levi is a member of ACIP. Reporting from Endpoints News additionally revealed that Levi will work alongside Robert Malone and James Pagano, both of whom also serve on ACIP.
Levi has previously criticized mRNA vaccines, in particular, claiming that they can cause harm and even death, according to multiple sources, and has called for their withdrawal from the market—something that could happen “within months,” according to recent media reports. Like Levi, Malone also has a well-documented background of criticizing vaccines, particularly those using mRNA technology. Pagano is an emergency medicine physician.
As head of the COVID-19 subcommittee, Levi will bring his experience from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he is a professor of operations management. He is also lead faculty for the school’s Food Chain Supply Analytics initiative.
Levi’s vaccine skepticism was on full display during the most recent ACIP meeting in June, when the panel was supposed to—but ultimately did not—vote on COVID-19 immunization guidelines. Even when faced with evidence showing that vaccines containing thimerosal are safe, Levi declined to agree. Concluding that they haven’t caused harm, he argued, “is a tricky issue.” He added that while evidence indicates individual vaccines containing thimerosal are not harmful, clearly there is harm based on cumulative effects.
Levi was also one of two panelists who voted against recommending Merck’s respiratory syncytial virus antibody Enflonsia for use in infants—a recommendation ACIP ultimately endorsed.
Levi found his way onto ACIP this June, when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. purged all 17 previous members of the committee, claiming that the “clean sweep” was “necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.” This move has attracted criticism from many groups, including the American Medical Association, which called for a Senate probe into Kennedy and for an “immediate reversal” of his decision.
“Vaccines have been proven to dramatically reduce hospitalization and death,” according to an AMA resolution days after Kennedy emptied the ACIP. “It is imperative for recommendations to be made without political interference.”
