Retsef Levi has been appointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which has been charged with reviewing the safety of Covid-19 vaccines. Levi is a professor of Operations Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, not a physician or vaccine expert, and his prior research into the safety of Covid-19 vaccines has been criticized by experts for failing to meet basic scientific standards.
Experts have criticized Levi’s research, including papers in which he suggested a correlation between Covid-19 vaccines and increased rates of cardiac arrest or mortality, with some arguing that his work is driven by a pre-existing agenda rather than objective scientific inquiry. They have also pointed out his lack of relevant expertise in vaccines and public health.
Levi, who now heads ACIP’s special immunizations working group on the Covid-19 vaccines, has called the vaccines “the most failing medical product in the history of medical products,” despite extensive research showing that they are safe and saved an estimated 20 million lives in the first year of their rollout. In 2023, he falsely claimed that there was “mounting and indisputable” evidence that mRNA vaccines like the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines “cause serious harm, including death.”