MIT Sloan Professor Retsef Levi takes charge of CDC COVID-19 vaccination working group
The professor, who has criticized mRNA technology, is developing policy recommendations regarding COVID-19 vaccinations
In June 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed an entirely new membership roster to serve four-year appointments on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a federal advisory committee under the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Prof. Retsef Levi, the J. Spencer Standish Professor in Operations Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, is among these appointed members.
In August, the ACIP formed a subset working group out of its existing members with the goal of reviewing “all relevant published and unpublished data” regarding COVID-19 immunizations. Under Levi, the newly appointed chair for this vaccine working group, members will create policy options and propose them to the rest of the ACIP, which conducts votes on the proposals.
According to CDC’s Terms of Reference for the COVID-19 Immunization Workgroup, the three primary topics under discussion are “conducting risk-benefit and cost-benefit analysis of existing and newly FDA-authorized mRNA and other COVID-19 immunizations,” identifying “critical gaps in the existing scientific and clinical knowledge and methodologies related to the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 immunizations,” and reviewing data “related to adverse events associated with COVID-19 immunizations.”
On Sept. 19, the ACIP voted unanimously to make COVID-19 vaccinations an individual choice, uncoupling guidelines from CDC recommendations for different risk groups. Additionally, the committee encouraged people to speak with a clinician about risks and benefits before electing to receive the vaccine. Later during the meeting, Levi brought another measure before the board. “We [the COVID-19 subgroup] feel that vaccines should be prescribed”, Levi recommended during the ACIP meeting. Ultimately, this measure failed on a 6-6 vote after committee chair Martin Kulldorff broke the tie.
This move comes after Kennedy dismissed all the previous members of ACIP, diverging from the typical CDC process of selecting field experts to form policy opinions. This choice was criticized by many groups, including the American Medical Association, who called for a Senate probe into Kennedy for this action.
Levi has a Ph.D. in operations research and lacks clinical or scientific background in vaccine and immunization sciences. Most of his current work focuses on health systems, in addition to the Food Supply Chain Analytics and Sensing Initiative (FSAS), supply chains, and logistics and revenue management. Levi’s publicly available CV, which was last updated in January 2025, lists two studies he led or participated in regarding vaccination, with a specific focus on COVID-19 immunizations. One article studied an increase in cardiovascular side-effects following the COVID-19 vaccination, and the other found lower vaccine efficacy compared to rates published in literature elsewhere.
On his faculty website, Levi includes a new July 2025 article from himself and pediatrician Efrat Schurr, which reviews a prior study by Dick et. al from BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 2022 on the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy. Levi and Schurr state that “the analysis by Dick et al. seems to have several inherent biases with potentially significant impact on the interpretation of the results.” Peer reviewers from BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth note that even if these biases are present, they are unlikely to “have a serious impact on the results.”
Levi has also expressed his beliefs on vaccines on his personal social media accounts. In a post on X on Sept. 23, Levi said, “It is evident that most of the public and vast majority of healthcare workers (90%) do not buy into the narrative of ‘safe and effective’ COVID vaccine that should be taken by everyone each year.” Levi does not state the source from which he draws this conclusion. A 2024 peer-reviewed study in BMC Health Services Research finds that a majority (83.1%) of healthcare workers in the U.S. and Puerto Rico would recommend the COVID-19 vaccination to all their patients.
In the same post, Levi attached a video recording of his Sept. 18 presentation, which claimed that “56% suspect COVID-19 vaccines caused death,” per a recent poll of the general public. The poll that Levi cited was conducted on 1,158 U.S. voters by Rasmussen Reports, an American polling company that has faced criticism from other polling companies due to unclear and inconsistent polling standards.
On Jan. 30, 2023, Levi posted on X, calling for the immediate halt of mRNA vaccinations, stating that they “cause serious harm including death, especially among young people.” Levi repeated this claim during recent ACIP meetings.
Institutions such as the National Human Genome Research Institute and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health deem mRNA technology safe and effective. The latter notes that mRNA vaccine technology has been especially effective in rapidly developing treatments for new disease on the foundation of several decades of research. John Hopkins’s article also mentions that the risk of myocarditis in young men, even among those who were vaccinated, remains ten times lower than the risk of developing myocarditis from a natural COVID-19 infection.
In a statement to The Tech, Levi emphasized the importance of the responsibility given to him. “I am committed to work as hard as I can, and contribute to improve the information and assessments we provide to the public and medical providers regarding the benefits and risks related to different vaccines so that individuals can make optimal choices in consultation with their medical providers,” he wrote.
Levi also cited his experience as a contributing factor to his position at CDC, writing that he “brings highly relevant expertise to this role” and emphasizing that his prior work “has focused on complex systems that operate under a lot of uncertainty and with great consideration to risk management.” He also highlighted his research in healthcare, citing “extensive work with clinicians” along with “healthcare systems, pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies like the FDA.”