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In a September 2020 op-ed in the ''Wall Street Journal'', Bhattacharya and Kulldorff argued that [[COVID-19 testing]] should not be used to "check asymptomatic children to see if it is safe for them to come to school" and that "strategic age-targeted viral testing will protect older people from deadly COVID-19 exposure and children and young adults from needless school closures."<ref name="MedPage2"/><ref>Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, [https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-against-covid-tests-for-the-young-and-healthy-11599151722 The Case Against Covid Tests for the Young and Healthy], ''Wall Street Journal'' (September 3, 2020).</ref>
In a September 2020 op-ed in the ''Wall Street Journal'', Bhattacharya and Kulldorff argued that [[COVID-19 testing]] should not be used to "check asymptomatic children to see if it is safe for them to come to school" and that "strategic age-targeted viral testing will protect older people from deadly COVID-19 exposure and children and young adults from needless school closures."<ref name="MedPage2"/><ref>Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, [https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-against-covid-tests-for-the-young-and-healthy-11599151722 The Case Against Covid Tests for the Young and Healthy], ''Wall Street Journal'' (September 3, 2020).</ref>

On October 8th, 2020, then-director of the [[National Institutes of Health]] [[Francis Collins]] sent an email to [[Anthony Fauci]] labeling Kulldorff and the other authors of the Great Barrington Declaration as "fringe epidemiologists" and sought a "devastating published take down" of the declaration's premises.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Board|first=The Editorial|date=2021-12-21|title=Opinion {{!}} How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate|language=en-US|work=Wall Street Journal|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/fauci-collins-emails-great-barrington-declaration-covid-pandemic-lockdown-11640129116|url-access=subscription|access-date=2022-01-31|issn=0099-9660}}</ref>


In 2021, Kulldorff was named a senior scientific director at the Brownstone Institute, a new think tank launched by [[Jeffrey Tucker]] that publishes articles challenging various measures against COVID-19, presenting research supporting authors' opinions, and discussing alternative measures.<ref>{{Cite web|title=About Brownstone Institute ⋆ Brownstone Institute|url=https://brownstone.org/about/|access-date=2022-01-14|website=Brownstone Institute|language=en-US}}</ref> Bhattacharya and Gupta, his co-authors on the Great Barrington Declaration, also have had roles there.<ref name=":32" />
In 2021, Kulldorff was named a senior scientific director at the Brownstone Institute, a new think tank launched by [[Jeffrey Tucker]] that publishes articles challenging various measures against COVID-19, presenting research supporting authors' opinions, and discussing alternative measures.<ref>{{Cite web|title=About Brownstone Institute ⋆ Brownstone Institute|url=https://brownstone.org/about/|access-date=2022-01-14|website=Brownstone Institute|language=en-US}}</ref> Bhattacharya and Gupta, his co-authors on the Great Barrington Declaration, also have had roles there.<ref name=":32" />

Revision as of 01:53, 1 February 2022

Martin Kulldorff
Born1962 (age 61–62)[1]
Lund, Sweden[1]
NationalitySwedish
Alma materUmeå University
Cornell University
Known forCo-author of Great Barrington Declaration
Scientific career
InstitutionsHarvard Medical School
Brigham and Women's Hospital
ThesisOptimal Control of Favorable Games with a Time Limit (1989)
Doctoral advisorDavid Clay Heath

Martin Kulldorff (born 1962) is a Swedish biostatistician. From 2015 to 2021, he was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and biostatistician at the Brigham and Women's Hospital.[2][3][4] He is a member of the Food and Drug Administration's Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee and a former consultant for the Centers for Disease Control.[1][5]

In 2020, Kulldorff was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups to encourage herd immunity while attempting to protect more vulnerable groups.[6][7] He opposed measures against COVID-19 such as lockdowns, contact tracing and mask mandates.[6][8][9]

Early life and education

Kulldorff was born in Lund, Sweden, in 1962, the son of Barbro and Gunnar Kulldorff. He grew up in Umeå, and received a BSc in mathematical statistics from Umeå University in 1984.[1] He then moved to the United States for his postgraduate studies as a Fulbright fellow,[1] obtaining a PhD in operations research from Cornell University in 1989. His PhD thesis, titled Optimal Control of Favorable Games with a Time Limit, was written under the direction of David Clay Heath.[10]

Career

Biostatistics

Kulldorff has over twenty years of work history[original research?] in epidemiology and developing new epidemiological methods.[11] He developed a free SaTScan software program used for geographical and hospital disease surveillance as well as a TreeScan software program for data mining. He is the co-developer of the R-Sequential software program for exact sequential analysis.[12] However, his key scientific contribution[citation needed] is the development of the statistical and epidemiological methods that are used in the software. These methods include spatial and space-time scan statistics, the tree-based scan statistics and various sequential analysis methods.[13][14][non-primary source needed]

He helped develop and implement statistical methods used by the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) project that the CDC uses, among other tools, to discover and evaluate vaccine health and safety risks.[15][16][17]

He previously was a member of CDC's COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Technical (VAST) subgroup as a consultant[18] but was removed from the group for disagreeing with the opinion the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine roll-out should be paused.[19][unreliable source?] Kulldorff asserted that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks and the roll-out should not be paused.[20] After a two-week pause, the CDC reinstated the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, citing the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks.[21][22][23][improper synthesis?][neutrality is disputed]

COVID-19 pandemic

Kulldorff was one of the three authors, along with Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya, of the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, which advocated letting lower-risk groups develop COVID-19 herd immunity through infection while attempting to protect more vulnerable groups.[24][25] The World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health and other public-health bodies said such a policy lacked a sound scientific basis,[26][27][28][29][30] and warned that it could cause many unnecessary deaths and could result in recurrent epidemics.[27] Kulldorff and the other authors met with officials of the Trump administration to share their ideas on October 5, 2020, the day after the declaration was made public.[31]

Kulldorff has opposed COVID-19 lockdowns, contact tracing and mask mandates during the pandemic, and has appeared at media events to support the Great Barrington Declaration.[32][6][33][34][35][9] Kulldorff has spoken out against vaccine passports, contending that they harm the working class.[36] Kulldorff supports COVID-19 vaccinations for "older people" but questioned where younger adults and children should be vaccinated against COVID-19, and contends that "vaccine mandates are unethical."[37]

In a September 2020 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Bhattacharya and Kulldorff argued that COVID-19 testing should not be used to "check asymptomatic children to see if it is safe for them to come to school" and that "strategic age-targeted viral testing will protect older people from deadly COVID-19 exposure and children and young adults from needless school closures."[6][38]

In 2021, Kulldorff was named a senior scientific director at the Brownstone Institute, a new think tank launched by Jeffrey Tucker that publishes articles challenging various measures against COVID-19, presenting research supporting authors' opinions, and discussing alternative measures.[39] Bhattacharya and Gupta, his co-authors on the Great Barrington Declaration, also have had roles there.[8]

In December 2021, Kulldorff became one of the first three fellows, along with Bhattacharya and Scott Atlas, at the Academy for Science and Freedom, a program of the private conservative liberal arts college Hillsdale College.[40][41]

Other

Kulldorff is a member of the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee at the Food and Drug Administration,[1] and a former consultant for the Centers for Disease Control's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.[5][42]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Harvard statistician appointed honorary doctor at the Faculty of Science and Technology". www.umu.se. Umeå University. August 10, 2020. Retrieved March 18, 2021.
  2. ^ "Martin Kulldorff, PhD". Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. Retrieved February 13, 2021.
  3. ^ "Martin Kulldorff". LinkedIn. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
  4. ^ "Foreign Agents #16 - The War on Scientific Dissent w/Jay Bhattacharya & Martin Kulldorf". Rokfin. Retrieved January 16, 2022.
  5. ^ a b LaVito, Angelica (April 21, 2021). "J&J Shot's Future Depends on 15 Cautious Vaccine Experts". Bloomberg. Retrieved September 2, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. ^ a b c d D'Ambrosio, Amanda (October 19, 2020). "Who Are the Scientists Behind the Great Barrington Declaration?". www.medpagetoday.com. Retrieved January 22, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. ^ Gorski, David. "The Great Barrington Declaration: COVID-19 deniers follow the path laid down by creationists, HIV/AIDS denialists, and climate science deniers". Science-Based Medicine.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ^ a b D'Ambrosio, Amanda (November 11, 2021). "New Institute Has Ties to the Great Barrington Declaration". www.medpagetoday.com. Retrieved November 27, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  9. ^ a b "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Pushes Through Pardons For Mask Mandate And COVID-19 Violators". CBS Miami. June 16, 2021. Retrieved August 27, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. ^ Martin Kulldorff at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  11. ^ "Evaluating Age Based Coronavirus Strategies With Martin Kulldorff". Contagion Live. Retrieved January 20, 2022.
  12. ^ Silva, Ivair; Gagne, Joshua; Najafzadeh, Mehdi; Kulldorff, Martin (November 25, 2019). "Exact sequential analysis for multiple weighted binomial end points". Statistics in Medicine. 39 (3): 340–351. doi:10.1002/sim.8405. PMC 6984739. PMID 31769079.
  13. ^ "Package 'Sequential'" (PDF). February 21, 2021. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
  14. ^ "Spatial and Space-Time Scan Statistics". surveillance.cancer.gov. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  15. ^ Lieu, Tracy A.; Kulldorff, Martin; Davis, Robert L.; Lewis, Edwin M.; Weintraub, Eric; Yih, Katherine; Yin, Ruihua; Brown, Jeffrey S.; Platt, Richard; Team, Vaccine Safety Datalink Rapid Cycle Analysis (2007). "Real-Time Vaccine Safety Surveillance for the Early Detection of Adverse Events". Medical Care. 45 (10): S89–S95. ISSN 0025-7079. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-sponsored Vaccine Safety Datalink Project developed a real-time surveillance system and initiated its use in an ongoing study of a new meningococcal vaccine for adolescents.
  16. ^ "Harvard Catalyst Profiles: Martin Kulldorff". Harvard Catalyst. Retrieved January 15, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  17. ^ Li, Rongxia; Weintraub, Eric; McNeil, Michael M.; Kulldorff, Martin; Lewis, Edwin M.; Nelson, Jennifer; Xu, Stanley; Qian, Lei; Klein, Nicola P.; Destefano, Frank (April 2018). "Meningococcal conjugate vaccine safety surveillance in the Vaccine Safety Datalink using a tree-temporal scan data mining method". Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety. 27 (4): 391–397. doi:10.1002/pds.4397. ISSN 1099-1557. PMID 29446176.
  18. ^ Lee, G. M., Hopkins, R. "COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Technical (VaST) Subgroup" (PDF): 9. Kulldorff included as VAST member, consultant on page 9 {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  19. ^ Michael Brendan Dougherty. "COVID-19 Rewired Our Brains". National Review. Retrieved January 16, 2022. When Dr. Martin Kulldorff expressed his view that the pause of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine would do more harm than good, the CDC threw him off its vaccine-safety advisory committee.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  20. ^ Kulldorff, Martin (April 17, 2021). "The dangers of pausing the J&J vaccine". TheHill. Retrieved January 16, 2022. Unfortunately, the recent "pause" on using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will dampen the impact of this success.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  21. ^ Nania, Rachel. "Health Officials End Pause on Johnson & Johnson Vaccine". AARP. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
  22. ^ CDC (December 28, 2021). "Information about the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
  23. ^ Commissioner, Office of the (April 26, 2021). "FDA and CDC Lift Recommended Pause on Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) COVID-19 Vaccine Use Following Thorough Safety Review". FDA. Retrieved January 16, 2022. The FDA has determined that the available data show that the vaccine's known and potential benefits outweigh its known and potential risks in individuals 18 years of age and older.
  24. ^ Burki, Talha Khan (February 1, 2021). "Herd immunity for COVID-19". The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. 9 (2): 135–136. doi:10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30555-5. ISSN 2213-2600. PMC 7832483. PMID 33245861.
  25. ^ "Why Was The Declaration Written?". Great Barrington Declaration. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
  26. ^ Zilbermints, Regina (October 15, 2020). "Dozens of public health groups, experts blast 'herd immunity' strategy backed by White House". TheHill. Retrieved January 22, 2022.
  27. ^ a b Hernandez, Sarah Toy and Daniela (October 18, 2020). "Scientists Push Back on Herd-Immunity Approach to Covid-19". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved August 27, 2021. A group of scientists is pushing back on renewed calls for a herd-immunity approach to Covid-19, calling the method of managing viral outbreaks dangerous and unsupported by scientific evidence. ... If immunity wanes after several months, as it does with the flu, patients could be susceptible to the virus after being infected, they said. That, they said, would result in recurrent and potentially large waves of infection, a common occurrence before vaccines were invented.
  28. ^ Gordon, Elana (October 20, 2020). "Public health experts warn against herd immunity strategy to manage COVID-19". The World from PRX. Retrieved August 27, 2021. As herd immunity gains new ground as a possible public health strategy, a growing chorus of public health experts is speaking out against it as an extremely dangerous idea. ... Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization, called the herd-immunity strategy unethical. ... In response to the mounting attention, dozens of health researchers from around the globe published what they've called the John Snow Memorandum last Thursday in the medical journal The Lancet.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  29. ^ Swanson, Ian (October 5, 2020). "Trump health official meets with doctors pushing herd immunity". TheHill. Retrieved August 27, 2021. The mainstream view of epidemiologists and public health experts, including the nation's top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization, is that the best way to get through COVID-19 and protect people who are at risk for serious illness is to not get sick in the first place by wearing masks and practicing social distancing.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  30. ^ Achenbach, Joel (October 14, 2020). "Proposal to hasten herd immunity to the coronavirus grabs White House attention but appalls top scientists". The Washington Post. A senior administration official told reporters in a background briefing call Monday that the proposed strategy — which has been denounced by other infectious-disease experts and called "fringe" and "dangerous" by National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins — supports what has been Trump's policy for months. ... "What I worry about with this is it's being presented as if it's a major alternative view that's held by large numbers of experts in the scientific community. That is not true," Collins, NIH director, said in an interview.
  31. ^ Mandavilli, Apoorva; Stolberg, Sheryl Gay (October 19, 2020). "A Viral Theory Cited by Health Officials Draws Fire From Scientists". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 22, 2022. On Oct. 5, the day after the declaration was made public, the three authors — Dr. Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard — arrived in Washington at the invitation of Dr. Atlas to present their plan to a small but powerful audience: the health and human services secretary, Alex M. Azar II.
  32. ^ Varadarajan, Tunku (October 23, 2020). "Opinion | Epidemiologists Stray From the Covid Herd". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved January 22, 2021.
  33. ^ Lenzer, Jeanne (October 7, 2020). "Covid-19: Group of UK and US experts argues for "focused protection" instead of lockdowns". BMJ. 371: m3908. doi:10.1136/bmj.m3908. ISSN 1756-1833. PMID 33028622.
  34. ^ "Anti-lockdown advocate appears on radio show that has featured Holocaust deniers". the Guardian. October 19, 2020. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
  35. ^ Musgrave, Jane. "Coronavirus: DeSantis lays groundwork to overturn local mask mandates, chides 'lockdown' states". The Palm Beach Post. Retrieved August 27, 2021.
  36. ^ "Gov. DeSantis: Vaccine passports are 'totally unacceptable'". NBC2 News. March 18, 2021. Retrieved August 27, 2021.
  37. ^ Kulldorff, Martin; Bhattacharya, Jay (June 17, 2021). "The ill-advised push to vaccinate the young". The Hill. Retrieved September 2, 2021.
  38. ^ Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, The Case Against Covid Tests for the Young and Healthy, Wall Street Journal (September 3, 2020).
  39. ^ "About Brownstone Institute ⋆ Brownstone Institute". Brownstone Institute. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
  40. ^ Bragman, Walker; Kotch, Alex (December 22, 2021). "How The Koch Network Hijacked The War On COVID". The Daily Poster. Retrieved January 19, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  41. ^ "Hillsdale College Opens New Academy for Science and Freedom". Hillsdale College on PRNewswire. December 10, 2021. Retrieved January 19, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  42. ^ "CDC Punishes 'Superstar' Scientist For COVID Vaccine Recommendation The CDC Followed 4 Days Later". The Federalist. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
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